Interesting Website & Other Events

Good Looks: Scandalize My Name on BET
Reviewed by Amin Sharif

I am not a great fan of BET. But occasionally, there is something worth watching on the channel. This month they offer two documentaries that are well worth watching: Scandalize My Name and The Howlin Wolf Story. Each, in its own right, is a unique contribution to the African-American experience. Scandalize My Name is, perhaps, the more exceptional of the two pieces.

Most scholars of African-American history are well aware of the impact of the anti-communist McCarthy period had on the careers of such notables as Paul Robeson.  Scandalize My Name  fully fleshes out the true impact on the black artist of that period. What I like about this documentary is that it devotes a significant amount of time to the story of Canada Lee-one of the most interesting actors of the period.

Canada Lee was born in 1907 and made movies from 1939 to 1951. He worked with both Orson Wells and Alfred Hitchcock. Canada Lee was cast as Bigger Thomas in Wells' production of Native Son. But a greater audience came to know Lee in films such as Lifeboat, Cry, the Beloved Country, and his work with John Garfield in Body and Soul. Lee’s role in the latter was particularly poignant since he was also a well-known prizefighter. By the way, it would be nice to see BET run all of Lee's films during Black History Month. But for now, I highly recommend that you watch this documentary.

The Howlin Wolf Story will bring smiles to the face of any serious Blues fan. This documentary follows the career of one of the most dynamic performer in Blues history. In grainy black and white, Howlin Wolf's raw sexual power and artistry is made plain. Son House, Bukka White, Otis Spann, Muddy Waters-all appear sometime or another in this documentary. And, then there is the music. From the Delta to the streets of Chicago, Howlin' Wolf roams and sings. There is a lot of good fun to be found in this film.

posted 18 December 2004

*   *   *   *   *

Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due. Born in 1898, Paul Robeson grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. His father had escaped slavery and become a Presbyterian minister, while his mother was from a distinguished Philadelphia family. At seventeen, he was given a scholarship to Rutgers University, where he received an unprecedented twelve major letters in four years and was his class valedictorian. After graduating he went on to Columbia University Law School, and, in the early 1920s, took a job with a New York law firm. Racial strife at the firm ended Robeson’s career as a lawyer early, but he was soon to find an appreciative home for his talents.

Returning to his love of public speaking, Robeson began to find work as an actor. In the mid-1920s he played the lead in Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1924) and The Emperor Jones (1925). Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, he was a widely acclaimed actor and singer. With songs such as his trademark “Ol’ Man River,” he became one of the most popular concert singers of his time.

His Othello was the longest-running Shakespeare play in Broadway history, running for nearly three hundred performances. It is still considered one of the great-American Shakespeare productions. While his fame grew in the United States, he became equally well-loved internationally. He spoke fifteen languages, and performed benefits throughout the world for causes of social justice. More than any other performer of his time, he believed that the famous have a responsibility to fight for justice and peace. . . . He retired to Philadelphia and lived in self-imposed seclusion until his death in 1976.

To this day, Paul Robeson’s many accomplishments remain obscured by the propaganda of those who tirelessly dogged him throughout his life. His role in the history of civil rights and as a spokesperson for the oppressed of other nations remains relatively unknown. In 1995, more than seventy-five years after graduating from Rutgers, his athletic achievements were finally recognized with his posthumous entry into the College Football Hall of Fame. Though a handful of movies and recordings are still available, they are a sad testament to one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century. If we are to remember Paul Robeson for anything, it should be for the courage and the dignity with which he struggled for his own personal voice and for the rights of all people.—PBS

*   *   *   *   *

The Professor and the Pupil The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B Du Bois and Paul Robeson By Murali Balaji Though honored as two of the most influential African-American leaders of the past century, journalist and novelist Balaji (House of Tinder) compensates in this political biography for "revisionist" historians who regularly omit Du Bois and Robeson's long-standing involvement with the Communist Party, distorting their impact on anti-colonial and radical political thought, eroding their legacies and diminishing their courage in the face of McCarthyism. Du Bois (1868-1963) began his career as an academic and authored 34 books, most notably The Souls of Black Folk, co-founded the NAACP and was an early advocate of Pan-Africanism. Best known for his Show Boat performance of "Ol' Man River" and his portrayal of Shakespeare's Othello, Robeson (1898-1976) gained international celebrity status (called "America's No. 1 Negro") with starring roles on Broadway and the London stage.

*   *   *   *   *

Robeson, The Council on African Affairs, and Anti-Colonial Politics

Paul Robeson’s pride in Black American culture and identification with African culture began at a relatively early age.  His father, an escaped slave of Igbo heritage, together with the Princeton Black community, strongly inspired and shaped Robeson’s identity as a Black man.  In the midst of segregated Princeton, the Black community of ex-slaves introduced Robeson to an appreciation of African culture through their performance of spirituals.  This reality served as a foundation for his later desire formally to study African cultures, particular West African languages, while living in London, England, during the 1930s.  Hence, it was at the London School of Oriental Languages that Robeson came to understand and value African cultures; it also was in London that he gained an appreciation of African nationalism.  These experiences shaped his personal development and political consciousness, leading him to conclude that African peoples should be free of European imperialism and colonialism (Duberman 1988; Robeson 1958; Robeson Jr. 2001). 

As his pride in and knowledge of Africa grew, and as he met African nationalists and intellectuals in London, Robeson saw it as his responsibility to speak out publicly against the oppression and exploitation of Africans. Moreover, he and others linked imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy, pointing out that the dehumanization and humiliation of Black Americans, Asians, and even ethnic Russians were generated by the same global system of domination.  It was in this way that he began to call for the revolutionary overthrow of global white supremacy and the implementation of scientific socialism and popular democracy on a world scale.  This was the context in which Robeson, together with other leading Black creative intellectuals, set in motion the development of an organization they employed to engineer an African Diaspora anticolonial movement (Robeson 1958; Stuckey 1987).

Moreover, in the face of the racist humiliation and degradation of Black Americans—one that portrayed them as a class of sub-humanity—Robeson and others sought to project a new cultural image by encouraging a progressive Black nationalist consciousness that had its foundation in the value of African cultural nationalism.  Hence, Robeson early on linked Black American cultural nationalism with African cultural nationalism.  In this regard, Sterling Stuckey argues: “His most daring intellectual achievement, however, was in positing the fundamental Africanity of black culture in America…” (Stuckey 1987: 352).  For Robeson, progressive Black nationalism had to be guided by scientific socialism, which was the revolutionary theory and practice that was energizing anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles around the world (Robeson 1958).

By the late 1930s, Robeson returned to the United States and helped to found an organization that would give expression to an African Diaspora politics designed to liberate Africa from colonial domination.  As Penny Von Eschen recounts in her important study, Race Against Empire (1997), the engine driving that effort was the Council on African Affairs (CAA), which emerged from the 1942 reorganization of the International Committee on African Affairs (ICAA).  Established with the assistance of Robeson in 1937, under the leadership Max Yergan, a Black American leftist from Raleigh, North Carolina, the ICAA mainly was an educational organization, comprised of leading Black educators, lawyers, and artists such as Mordecai Johnson, Ralph Bunche, and the Paris-based but Martinique-born intellectual Rene Maran.  ICAA’s mission was to inform the American public about Africa.  In the same year Ralph Bunche introduced Yergan to several African and Caribbean intellectual warriors in London, including Jomo Kenyatta (the future president of independent Kenya), George Padmore (the Caribbean Pan-Africanist), and I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson (the Sierra Leonean trade unionist and journalist). However, Yergan’s membership in the Communist Party and later assumption of the leadership of the National Negro Congress de-emphasized his involvement in the ICAA and resulted in numerous resignations from the ICAA (Von Eschen 1997).Dr. Floyd W. Hayes, III,  The Cultural Politics of Paul Robeson and Richard Wright

*   *   *   *   *
Interesting Website

 I Ain't Superstitious  / Evil  / Forty-Four / Little Red Rooster

Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), Born in White Station, Mississippi, near West Point, he was named after Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States. Known as Howlin' Wolf, he was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. With a booming voice and looming physical presence, Burnett is commonly ranked among the leading performers in electric blues; musician and critic Cub Koda declared, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." A number of songs written or popularized by Burnett—such as "Smokestack Lightnin'," "Back Door Man," "Killing Floor" and "Spoonful"—have become blues and blues rock standards.

At 6 feet, 6 inches and close to 300 pounds, he was an imposing presence with one of the loudest and most memorable voices of all the "classic" 1950s Chicago blues singers. This rough-edged, slightly fearsome musical style is often contrasted with the less crude but still powerful presentation of his contemporary and professional rival, Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Little Walter Jacobs, and Muddy Waters are usually regarded in retrospect as the greatest blues artists who recorded for Chess in Chicago. Sam Phillips once remarked, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.'" In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #51 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time."

Burnett explained the origin of the name Howlin' Wolf thus: "I got that from my grandfather [John Jones]." His Grandfather would often tell him stories about the wolves in that part of the country and warn him that if he misbehaved, the howling wolves would "get him". According to the documentary film The Howlin' Wolf Story, Howlin' Wolf's parents broke up when he was young. His very religious mother Gertrude threw him out of the house while he was still a child for refusing to work around the farm; he then moved in with his uncle, Will Young, who treated him badly. When he was 13, he ran away and claimed to have walked 85 miles (137 km) barefoot to join his father, where he finally found a happy home within his father's large family. During the peak of his success, he returned from Chicago to his home town to see his mother again, but was driven to tears when she rebuffed him and refused to take any money he offered her, saying it was from his playing the "Devil's music." In 1930, Howlin' Wolf met Charley Patton, the most popular bluesman in the Delta at the time. Wolf would listen to Patton play nightly from outside of a nearby juke joint. There he remembered Patton playing "Pony Blues," "High Water Everywhere," "A Spoonful Blues," and "Banty Rooster Blues." The two became acquainted and soon Patton was teaching him guitar. "The first piece I ever played in my life was . . . a tune about hook up my pony and saddle up my black mare" (Patton's "Pony Blues").

Wolf also learned about showmanship from Patton: "When he played his guitar, he would turn it over backwards and forwards, and throw it around over his shoulders, between his legs, throw it up in the sky." "Chester [Wolf] could perform the guitar tricks he learned from Patton for the rest of his life." "Chester learned his lessons well and played with Patton often [in small Delta communities]."—Wikipedia

*   *   *   *   *

AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books

 

Fiction

#1 - Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark
#2 - Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree
#3 - Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane
#4 - Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper
#5 - Stackin' Paper 2 Genesis' Payback by Joy King
#6 - Thug Lovin' (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark
#7 - When I Get Where I'm Going by Cheryl Robinson
#8 - Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby
#9 - The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane

#10 - Covenant: A Thriller  by Brandon Massey

#11 - Diary Of A Street Diva  by Ashley and JaQuavis

#12 - Don't Ever Tell  by Brandon Massey

#13 - For colored girls who have considered suicide  by Ntozake Shange

#14 - For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree

#15 - Homemade Loves  by J. California Cooper

#16 - The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper

#17 - Player Haters by Carl Weber

#18 - Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare

#19 - Stackin' Paper by Joy King

#20 - Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey

#21 - The Upper Room by Mary Monroe

#22 – Thug Matrimony  by Wahida Clark

#23 - Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark

#24 - Married Men by Carl Weber

#25 - I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter

Non-fiction

#1 - Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
#2 - Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans
#3 - Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane
#4 - Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper
#5 - Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant
#6 - Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey
#7 - The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight
#8 - The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing
#9 - The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson

#10 - John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History  by Ahati N. N. Toure

#11 - Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley

#12 -The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

#13 - The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell

#14 - The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

#15 - Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can't Commit  by RM Johnson

#16 - Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins

#17 - Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell

#18 - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

#19 - John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard

#20 - Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris

#21 - Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice

#22 - 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino
#23 - Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul by Tom Lagana
#24 - 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields

#25 - Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class  by Lisa B. Thompson

*   *   *   *   *

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

*   *   *   *   *

Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays Edited by Miriam DeCosta-Willis  Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a collection of fourteen essays by scholars and creative writers from Africa and the Americas. Called one of two significant critical works on Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late 1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of Carter G. Woodson and Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an historical context for understanding 20th-century creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone writers, such as Cuban Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist, and scholar Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the significance of Negritude in Latin America. This collaborative text set the tone for later conferences in which writers and scholars worked together to promote, disseminate, and critique the literature of Spanish-speaking people of African descent. . . . Cited by a literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."

*   *   *   *   *

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)

*   *   *   *   *

Ancient African Nations

*   *   *   *   *

If you like this page consider making a donation

online through PayPal

*   *   *   *   *

Negro Digest / Black World

Browse all issues

1950        1960        1965        1970        1975        1980        1985        1990        1995        2000 ____ 2005        

Enjoy!

*   *   *   *   *

The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery / George Jackson  / Hurricane Carter

*   *   *   *   *

The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

*   *   *   *   *

BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS   BCP Digital Printing

*   *   *   *   *

ChickenBones Store (Books, DVDs, Music, and more)

 

 update 2 March 2012