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ChickenBones:
A Journal
for
Literary & Artistic African-American Themes |
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If the hill is too steep, teach
them to climb. / If they don't know, teach them
it's time.
If they suffer from insomnia,
teach them to wake. / If they are dead, teach them to
live.
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Teach Them
By Jeremiah Mickens If someone is drowning, teach them
to swim.
If someone is crawling, teach them
to walk.
If they can't speak, teach them to
talk.
If ugliness prevails, teach them
their beauty and they'll never fail.
If someone is hateful, teach them
love.
If the hill is too steep, teach
them to climb.
If they don't know, teach them
it's time.
If they suffer from insomnia,
teach them to wake.
If they are dead, teach them to
live.
If someone is selfish, them them
to give.
If someone is falling, teach them
to fly.
If they are violent, teach them
peace.
If he is her, teach him to be him.
Teach them to teach them, to teach
them,
to teach them, to teach them . . . |
Jeremiah Mickens' autobiographical
statement:
I was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. I attended Rognel
Heights, Harlem Park, and Liberty elementary schools. My family
traveled to California when I was in the fourth or fifth grade.
As we traveled my mother taught us in the motor home that
lived in. It was my stepfather, mother, and three sisters. On
the way to California we stopped briefly and lived in a house in
Phoenix, Arizona. When we finally arrived in Los Angeles it was
almost six months later. We stayed in our motor home and lived
partly in a house and partly in the motor home of a family
friend. We stayed there a year. I attended Charles drew
Elementary. My mother taught me at home for a long time because
when I went back to school I was in the eighth grade.
I graduated from Charles drew, Jr. High. Somehow we ended up
in Malibu, California. the lifestyle was completely different
from Compton and East LA. Here we again stayed partly in a house
and partly in a trailer. The part of Malibu we lived in was
known as Point Dume. There I would ride the horse down to the
beach daily. When Angel [the horse] would feel the sand under
her feet she would take-off running.
I also began to lift weights and jog from Point Dume to
Trancas. I attended Samo High in Santa Monica, California. I
stayed there for two years partying and having a good time. It
was my second year at Samo that I began to enjoy acting in my
second play Nicholas Nickleby. I played three characters
-- Pluck, Curdle, and Belling. It was acting that began to give
me the focus I needed on education.
The focus was just in time because we moved again. this time
we moved to Venice, California. I attended Venice High School.
In Venice I became a member of the Venice High School Thespians.
I acted in independent films, school plays, and tributes by
Beverly Hills West Chapter LINKS.
My grades were not up to par so I was not allowed to act in
any plays. My focus for school became even sharper. After school
I would play football and basketball, avoiding hanging out with
the many gangs that wanted to jump me in. I was focus mentally.
I knew what I wanted to do. I was determined to do, be the best.
My mother changed that focus when she explained that we were
moving back to Baltimore. I did not want to go. We came to
California with a whole family of six. Now it was only a family
of three. Soon it would be a family of none. We flew back to
Baltimore.
In Baltimore I saw friends get shot. Many guns were pointed
at me by robbers and police. I held the hands of the bleeding
and dying. I cried on the shoulders of mothers and fathers. So
many people I knew made it to the front page of the Baltimore
Sun.
I ended up at Walbrook High School. I went through all of the
graduation ceremonies but would not graduate from Walbrook. I
graduated from Harbor City. I then went straight to Baltimore
City Community College. After taking a break from college and
cooking for five years in a Mexican restaurant in 1995 I married
my high school sweetheart. We now have five children.
In 1996, I began to substitute in Baltimore City Public
Schools. I started working in Companions extended Daycare in
1998. While there I attended college and graduated from
Sojourner Douglass in 2000. I am now studying reading at Johns
Hopkins University.
I have seen and been through a lot. But I never let go of my
dream to be an actor, writer, teacher. One must have a dream.
Hold onto it. Don't squeeze it too tight because it may slip
away. Find the median and once you do you'll have the perfect
grip. That's the time to hold on and don't let go, when it's
good times or bad times. Just remember don't let go.
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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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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'."
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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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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 8 December 2011
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