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Books by Eugene Redmond
Sides of the River (1969)
/
Sentry of the
Four Golden Pillars (1970) /
River of Bones and Flesh and Blood
(1971) /
Songs
from an Afro/Phone (1972)
In
a Time of Rain & Desire (1973) /
Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (2003)
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Report on the 10th National Black
Writers Conference
@ Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn NY
By Eugene B. Redmond
Yo cohorts—
Back at the MotherShip after being immersed in the
10th National Black Writers Conference @ Medgar
Evers College in Brooklyn NY. Over four daze, Toni
Morrison, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Sonia Sanchez,
Amiri Baraka, Talib Kweli, Gary Bartz, Gil
Scott-Heron, James McBride, Maaza Mengiste, Tony
Medina, Kevin Powell, Louis Massiah, Tayari Jones,
Herb Boyd, Malaika Adero, Susan L. Taylor, Colson
Whitehead, Kalamu ya Salaam and others shared/bared
their hearts/arts and then partied--with a purpose,
as we used to say in the '60's—hard.
Below is Howard Rambsy's preface to a photo exhibit
designed especially for NBWC and housed in the Innis
Library at M.E.C. [Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn
NY]. easy, ebr . . .
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Visualizing Literary Thunder
An Exhibit from the Eugene B. Redmond Collection
Curated by Howard Rambsy II
In retrospect, the publication of Eugene B.
Redmond’s
Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, A
Critical History (1976) marks an important shift
in the history of black literary history. Although
many observers pinpoint the late 1970s as a time of
declining significance for the cultural enterprise
known as the Black Arts Movement, it was during
these years that Redmond began to dramatically
increase his methods of charting African American
cultural activity.
The results of
Redmond’s tremendous efforts form the basis of what
is now known as the Eugene B. Redmond (EBR)
Collection, an extensive collection of books,
literary magazines, rare program booklets and
flyers, audio recordings, and more than 150,000
photographs of literary artists, musicians,
entertainers, supporters of the arts and political
activists. The EBR Collection, which is housed at
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Lovejoy
Library, could easily be subtitled, “the ongoing
mission of black arts activity.”
The EBR Collection provides remarkable evidence that
artists who came of age during the 1960s have
remained quite active during the latter decades of
the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st
century. If the Black Arts Movement ended during the
mid 1970s, then the artists whom Redmond has
documented over the last decades failed to receive
the memo that their artistic activities should
somehow be in decline.
The EBR
Collection charts Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki
Giovanni, Quincy Troupe, and more than one hundred
other black poets and artists year after year at
reading after reading looking more and more vibrant
and energetic. The EBR Collection also charts
notable transformations. For example, one of
Redmond’s photographs shows an editor named Toni
Morrison in her office at Random House during the
early 1970s, and then later, Redmond photographs
that editor-turned-novelist at a party in 1994 being
honored for recently receiving the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
One of Redmond’s images shows
Maya Angelou at a small gathering celebrating her
birthday in 1976; another Redmond image shows
Angelou, alongside Oprah Winfrey, at a much larger
affair celebrating Angelou’s 80th birthday in 2008.
Redmond’s Drumvoices charts a history of
black poetry; and the EBR Collection documents more
than 40 years of evolving movements in African
American artistic culture.
This exhibit, “Visualizing Literary Thunder,” from
the Lovejoy Library’s EBR Collection, highlights
past National Black Writers Conferences (NBWC) and
features noted honorees and participants of the
conferences, such as John Oliver Killens, Toni
Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Toni Cade Bambara, Edward
Kamau Brathwaite, and Jayne Cortez.
The panels show participants at
the NBWC over the years and at various other
gatherings across the country. Images showcasing
various events beyond the NBWC clarify the
involvement of multiple literary artists, musicians,
and participants over a period of time and
demonstrate interconnectivity of various African
American literary projects and
conferences.
The photographs present a wide
range of figures, including Barbara Christian, Tom
Dent, Charles Johnson, Paule Marshall, Terry
McMillan, Walter Mosley, Elizabeth Nunez, Kevin
Powell,Ishmael Reed, Darlene Roy, Sonia Sanchez,
Ntozake Shange, Sekou Sundiata, Eleanor Traylor,
Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, John A. Williams,
August Wilson, and many more. The images make us
more aware of how Eugene B. Redmond has served as
one of our most committed and extraordinary African
American cultural witnesses, and overall, the
exhibit showcases the past and developing movements
of black literary and cultural activity.
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Source of
photos:
http://www.FaceBook Troy Johnson
Album.
Eugene B.
Redmond (born 1937 St. Louis) is an American
poet, and academic.He graduated from Southern
Illinois University, and from Washington University
with an M.A. He is an Emeritus Professor of English
at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He
founded the EBR Writers Club in March of 1986.His
papers are held at University of Illinois at
Springfield, and photo archive at Southern Illinois
University Edwardsville.
posted 29 March 2010
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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