Credits: Irvine, Weldon (Songwriter); Simone, Nina (Songwriter); EMI GROVE PARK MUSIC INC (Publisher); NINANDY MUSIC CO (Publisher)

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"To Be Young, Gifted and Black" is a song by Nina Simone with lyrics by Weldon Irvine. It was written in memory of Simone's late friend Lorraine Hansberry, author of the play Raisin in the Sun. The song was originally recorded by Simone for her 1970 album Black Gold; released as a single, it became a Top Ten R&B hit and a Civil Rights anthem. Notable cover versions of the song were recorded by Donny Hathaway (on his 1970 album Everything Is Everything), Aretha Franklin (on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black) and Bob and Marcia (whose 1970 recording reached number 5 in the UK charts).

Elton John recorded a version of "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" prior to his solo success. Intended to be released as a low budget sound-alike version of the original, it was later reissued on the compilation album Covers as Sung by Elton John. Wikipedia

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After her death, her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff adapted a collection of her work, correspondence, and interviews together in To Be Young, Gifted and Black. It opened Off-Broadway with an eight month run at the Cherry Lane. The same year To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words adapted by Robert Nemiroff was published [1970]— “Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965): A Brief Biography” by Tammy Burris

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 110 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died. Her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, which Julius Lester termed her best work, and he adapted many of her writings into the play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off-Broadway play of the 1968-1969 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words [1970].— Wikipedia

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1969 was rife with turmoil and hopeful new beginnings. The Vietnam War was in full swing and instituted the first draft since World War II… The Beatles made their last public concert appearance… James Earl Ray plead guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr… Golda Meir became the first female prime minister of Israel… And a few weeks after the Stonewall riots, man took his first tentative steps on the moon.  We conclude our Pride series with a look back at the Off-Broadway.  .  .  . productions performing in the shadow of the Ston

Racial conflict was explored in Charles Gardone’s drama No Place to Be Somebody, which had recently opened at The Public Theatre. For this work, playwright Charles Gardone became the first African-American author to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and No Place was the first time the Prize was given to an Off-Broadway production. At the Cherry Lane Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry’s husband adapted many of his late wife’s writings to create To Be Young, Gifted and Black, the longest-running play of the 1968-1969 Off-Broadway season. Billy Dee Williams was seen in Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, Lonne Elder III’s family drama that unfolded at a barbershop in Harlem.—Off-Broadway Pride Part III, Stonewall-Era Time Machine, Blog posted June 27, 2009

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Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965): The granddaughter of a freed slave Lorraine Hansberry became a spokesperson for black Americans. Her writings reflected her fight for black civil rights, and her views against racism and sexual and statutory discrimination. Due to her short life her legacy left only a few works but all with dramatic effect on all, no matter race or color, who came in touch with them. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois the youngest by seven years, of four children.

Her father, Carl A. Hansberry, was a successful real estate broker, who later contributed large sums of money to NAACP and the Urban League. Her mother, Nannie Perry, was a schoolteacher who entered politics and became a ward committeewoman (Metzger 146). . . .

In 1963 Lorraine Hansberry became very active in the civil rights movement in the South. She was a field organizer for CORE. Along with several other celebrated people among them Harry Belefonte, Lena Horne, and James Baldwin they met with the then attorney general Robert Kennedy challenging his position on civil rights (221). In 1964, she wrote The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality. During this time period she was diagnosed with cancer and divorced her husband although they continued their literary collaboration (253). Her second play The Sign in Sidney Bustein's Window opened on Broadway the same year. It received modest success. Lorraine Hansberry died of cancer on January 12, 1964 at the age of 34. The Sign in Sidney Bustein's Window closed on Broadway the same day.— “Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965): A Brief Biography” by Tammy Burris

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Lorraine Hansberry was the fourth child born to Carl Augustus Hansberry (a prominent real estate broker) and Nannie Louise Perry, and niece of the Africanist Professor William Leo Hansberry, after whom the Hansberry Institute of African Studies in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria, was named. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood.

The family moved into an all-white neighborhood, where they faced racial discrimination. Hansberry attended a mostly white public school while her parents fought against segregation. Hansberry's father engaged in a legal battle against a racially restrictive covenant that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in the area. The legal struggle over their move led to the landmark Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). Though victorious in the Supreme Court, Hansberry's family was subjected to what Hansberry would later ironically describe as a "warm and cuddly white neighborhood". This experience later inspired her to write her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun..

Her family home at 6140 S. Rhodes Ave. has since been designated a City of Chicago landmark.— Wikipedia

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Weldon Irvine on YouTube

Morning Sunrise / We gettin down  / I love you  / Music is the key  / Nursery Rhyme Song

 Boogie Down It's Funky  / Jungle Juice  / Gloria  /  Here's Where I Came In  /

Legendary Weldon Irvine's beautiful composition, "Here's Where I Came In": it is touching, poignant, and heartbreaking.

 Misty Dawn  / Weldon Irvine raps at West End NYC 96  /  Sexy Eyes

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Harlem Cultural Political Movements 1960-1970, From Malcolm X (Black Is Beautiful) By Klytus Smith, Abiola Sinclair, Hannibal Ahmed   Abiola Sinclair, 56, Amsterdam News columnist, dies. Final rites for Abiola Sinclair, a former Amsterdam News columnist, were held Wednesday, March 21, at Unity Funeral Home, Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 126th Street. Sinclair, who was also publisher of Black History Magazine, died at Mount Sinai Hospital on March 16, following her admission to the medical center in late January. She was 56 years old.

Sinclair reportedly was suffering from walking pneumonia, which friends said she didn't know she had for some time. In addition, Sinclair had a long-term heart condition.—J. Zamgba Browne, New York Amsterdam News, 28 March 2001.

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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America By Melissa V. Harris-Perry According to the author, this society has historically exerted considerable pressure on black females to fit into one of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the Matriarch or the Jezebel.  The selfless Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.      Professor Perry points out how the propagation of these harmful myths have served the mainstream culture well. For instance, the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for black females to feel a maternal instinct towards Caucasian babies. As for the source of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their own bodies during slavery given that they were being auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate indiscriminately.

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The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform Why We Need It and What It Will Take By Bruce Bartlett The United States Tax Code has undergone no serious reform since 1986. Since then, loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions have distorted its clarity, increased its inequity, and frustrated our ability to govern ourselves. At its core, any tax system is in place to raise the revenue needed to pay the government’s bills. But where that revenue should come from raises crucial questions: Should our tax code be progressive, with the wealthier paying more than the poor, and if so, to what extent? Should we tax income or consumption or both? Of the various ideas proposed by economists and politicians—from tax increases to tax cuts, from a VAT to a Fair Tax—what will work and won’t? By tracing the history of our own tax system and by assessing the way other countries have solved similar problems, Bartlett explores the surprising answers to all of these questions, giving a sense of the tax code’s many benefits—and its inevitable burdens. Tax reform will be a major issue debated in the years ahead. Growing budget deficits and the expiration of various tax cuts loom. Reform, once a philosophical dilemma, is turning into a practical crisis. By framing the various tax philosophies that dominate the debate, Bartlett explores the distributional, technical, and political advantages and costs of the various proposals and ideas that will come to dominate America’s political conversation in the years to come.

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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  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

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

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