Dick Gregory
A brief documentary glimpse into the extraordinary life and mind of living comedy legend, passionate social activist, world famous nutritionist, and American pioneer, DICK GREGORY. Told through an assortment of interviews and found footage.
Why Komen’s Decision
to Pull Funding Is So Deadly
[Infographic]
In a story published earlier today on Colorlines.com, Akiba Solomon quotes Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards saying the cancer detection and prevention programs Komen funded “saved the lives of women who often had nowhere else to turn for care.”
Below is an infographic from our archives that looks at just how deadly breast cancer is for women of color.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Too Light or White
to be African?
Why I support
Thandie Newton..
Late last week while perusing my online gossip sites for the latest celeb scoop, I read the news that actress Thandie Newton is slated to star in the film adaption of Chimanda Ngozi Adichie award winning book Half Of A Yellow Sun. Almost instantly my twitter timeline went berserk at the news of an online petition against the decision to cast Thandie (a biracial woman) as a Nigerian Igbo woman. The petition urges the production company to reassess the casting of Miss Newton and replace her role with an authentic dark skinned Igbo woman.
Thandie Newton
The petitioners write:
Igbo people, like any other people range in physical characteristics as well as complexion. However, the majority of Igbos are dark brown in complexion. Igbo people do not look like the bi-racial Thandie Newton. Thandie Newton is an accomplished and talented actress in her own right. However, she is not Igbo, she is not Nigerian, and she does not physically resemble Igbo women in the slightest.
This is an extremely touchy subject and I almost understand where the petitioners are coming from. As a dark skinned woman trust me when I tell you I’ve experienced many bouts of ignorance from other people in regards to my skin color. I can’t walk down the street without film, print and TV bombarding me with message “that if ain’t white it ain’t right”. However that being said, I strongly disagree with this petition.
Thandie may not be Nigerian or Igbo but she is an African woman. Newton is the daughter of Zimbabwean mother and a British father. She actually lived in Zambia and moved back to the UK at the age of 11. Furthermore she is an actress, she is not playing Thandie Netwon. A talented actor/actress has the ability to research, embody and take on the spirit of any role. I question the origins of the petition. Why didn’t this petition exist when Sophie Okenedo was cast in a lead role Hotel Rwanda? She’s also biracial, where was fury then? Better yet Idris Elba is in talks to play Nelson Mandela in a film adaption for Madiba’s life. Are we mad that he’s not from South Africa since he was born in the UK?
Let me remind you that the film also stars Chiwetel Ejifor who also belongs to the Igbo tribe. Ejifor an accomplished actor in his own right was born in London to Nigerian parents. Are we going to protest the fact that Ejifor was born in London and not Nigeria? Where does the line of African authenticity start and begin?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The truth of the matter is that Igbo women come in all shades of color, some as light as Thandie. Why do we as black folks/Africans feel the need to slice and dice blackness? When will we stop with the black on black racism? Or in this instance, African on African racism? A commentator on a popular site posted:
In fact, growing up in Nigeria, the term Igbo yellow was often used to refer to the fact that many Igbos are in fact light skinned. To be honest, Thandie could stand next to a few Igbo women I know, who are not biracial and her skin tone would match theirs.
My people, let’s not kid ourselves here, this is a Hollywood flick. Thandie is a great actress and highly recognizable by both UK & US audiences. Nominated for many film awards, it’s no brainer that she was cast as a lead actress. in my opinion this is a step in the right direction for Hollywood, way better than casting Terrance Howard and Jennifer Hudson in a Winnie Mandela movie. At least Thandie is half African and is a very accomplished actress. Let’s give her a chance and stop with the negativity. I for one am waiting with baited breath to see the movie.
6 comments:
Let's take a Paula Patton for example, who is mixed, but could definitely "pass" as white. Would she ever be cast to play a historically white character? WHY would a Liz Taylor be cast to Play Cleopatra? (Hollywood will even CHANGE the representation of a character to sell more movie tickets) Just because it is profitable, does not make it any less bigoted.I suppose this discussion should be directed more towards the "principle" being examined here as opposed to the actual casting for this particular movie. Mind you, I am a light skinned woman (by African standards) and I am well aware of how that, truthfully, affords me some privilidge in the warped/racially influenced society. I am also a film maker and avid African/African American history scholar and have seen a lot of these casting wars and their subtleties first hand. It would be nice is we could all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but the layers of complexity involved in this cannot be resolved by "color-blindedness" if you will.
News from Africa:
Former Black Panther
Pete O’Neal
in Tanzania Aiding Orphans
and Destitute Children
1Feb2012Author: drjelks
Source: LA Times
All Pete O’Neal has amassed fits on two pages: A small brick home with a sheet-metal roof. A few road-beaten vehicles. A cluster of bunkhouses and classrooms he spent decades building, brick by scavenged brick, near the slopes of Mt. Meru’s volcanic cone. Everything will go to his wife of 42 years, Charlotte, and to a few trusted workers.
He prints out the will late one Saturday morning and settles into his reclining chair to check the spelling. He signs his name. Then, to guarantee its authenticity, he finds an ink pad, rolls his thumb across it, and affixes his thumbprint to the bottom of the page.
“I think that’ll do it,” he says.
When last he walked America’s streets, O’Neal was a magnetic young man possessed of bottomless anger. He was an ex-con who’d found a kind of religion in late-’60s black nationalism, a vain, violent street hustler reborn in a Black Panther uniform of dark sunglasses, beret and leather jacket. With pitiless, knife-sharp diction, he spoke of sending police to their graves.
This morning, he sits in his living room uncapping medicine bottles. A pill for high blood pressure. Another for the pain in his back and his bad knee. An aspirin to thin his blood. Time is catching him, like the lions that pursue him implacably through his nightmares, their leashes held by policemen.
He pushes through his screen door into the brisk morning air. A slightly stooped, thickset man with long, graying dreadlocks, he moves unsteadily down the irregular stone steps he built into the sloping dirt. He makes his way past the enormous avocado tree, past the horse barn with its single slow-footed tenant, Bullet, past the shaded dining pavilion.
His four-acre compound bustles with visitors, many of them preparing for a memorial service for Geronimo Pratt, a former Panther who died in his farmhouse down the road, his affairs untidy, his will unfinished, his death a sharp message to O’Neal not to put off the paperwork any longer.
__________________________
Former Black Panther
patches together purpose
in Africa exile
Many of the young orphans gather round to watch, and lend their support, as Pete O'Neal has fresh ink applied to his fading black panther tattoo. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
January 29, 2012
Reporting from Imbaseni, Tanzania -- The fugitive shuffles to his computer and begins typing out his will. He is about to turn 71, and it is time. "My life," he writes, "has been a wild and wicked ride...."
All Pete O'Neal has amassed fits on two pages: A small brick home with a sheet-metal roof. A few road-beaten vehicles. A cluster of bunkhouses and classrooms he spent decades building, brick by scavenged brick, near the slopes of Mt. Meru's volcanic cone. Everything will go to his wife of 42 years, Charlotte, and to a few trusted workers.
He prints out the will late one Saturday morning and settles into his reclining chair to check the spelling. He signs his name. Then, to guarantee its authenticity, he finds an ink pad, rolls his thumb across it, and affixes his thumbprint to the bottom of the page.
"I think that'll do it," he says.
When last he walked America's streets, O'Neal was a magnetic young man possessed of bottomless anger. He was an ex-con who'd found a kind of religion in late-'60s black nationalism, a vain, violent street hustler reborn in a Black Panther uniform of dark sunglasses, beret and leather jacket. With pitiless, knife-sharp diction, he spoke of sending police to their graves.
This morning, he sits in his living room uncapping medicine bottles. A pill for high blood pressure. Another for the pain in his back and his bad knee. An aspirin to thin his blood. Time is catching him, like the lions that pursue him implacably through his nightmares, their leashes held by policemen.
He pushes through his screen door into the brisk morning air. A slightly stooped, thickset man with long, graying dreadlocks, he moves unsteadily down the irregular stone steps he built into the sloping dirt. He makes his way past the enormous avocado tree, past the horse barn with its single slow-footed tenant, Bullet, past the shaded dining pavilion.
His four-acre compound bustles with visitors, many of them preparing for a memorial service for Geronimo Pratt, a former Panther who died in his farmhouse down the road, his affairs untidy, his will unfinished, his death a sharp message to O'Neal not to put off the paperwork any longer.
Most of O'Neal's big dreams have faded over the years, or come to feel silly. Like beating the 42-year-old federal gun charges that caused him to flee the United States. Like the global socialist revolution that he was supposed to help lead. Like returning home to the streets of his Midwestern childhood. Like winning citizenship in his adopted African country, and the prize that's eluded him on two continents: the feeling of belonging somewhere.
This is what's left: the shell of a 20-year-old Toyota Coaster bus that bulks before him in a clearing. It's a stripped-and-gutted 29-seater that he bought for $11,500 after years of squirreling away money. It came with dents, a cracked windshield, a peeling paint job, rotting floorboards, frayed seats.
Still, it seemed like a good deal until he found the engine had to be replaced, costing an additional $4,000. He's hired mechanics and craftsmen to rebuild the bus nearly from the chassis up, and a few of them are milling around now, informing him in Swahili of their progress.
He rarely leaves home anymore. Crowds jangle his nerves; traffic makes his hands shake. Yet nothing feels more urgent than readying this bus for an improbable 300-mile trip to the edge of his adopted continent.
A group of American high school students, mostly white, is gathering in the dining pavilion. They've been coming by the busload for years, many drawn by the intrigue of staying with a former Panther. They pay him $30 a night for a bunk. The money — together with sporadic donations from sympathetic friends here and abroad — pays the bills.
Pete O'Neal in his Black Panther days. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
The students pause before the big poster featuring O'Neal as a fierce young militant, rifle in arms, Charlotte at his side. It's hard to reconcile that image with the grandfatherly host who greets them in Swahili as if they were old friends, booming, "Karibu!" Welcome!
He asks where they're from. A girl says Missouri, which happens to be his home state, and he hugs her theatrically. Everyone laughs. "All of you are welcome," he says, "even if you're from strange places."
He plants them before documentary footage about his life. It's easier than explaining the whole story himself. Where would he start? His childhood in segregated Kansas City, Mo., where the amusement park admitted black kids once a year, a day so cherished that they went in their Sunday best? Should he start with the stabbings and shootings in the projects where he grew up?
"I lived in the streets," he says. "I didn't have time to be happy."
After one arrest, he was given a stark choice: reform school or the armed services. The Navy threw him out after he plunged a butcher knife into another sailor's chest over an insult, nearly killing him. He drifted in and out of lockup. He pimped girls in three states. He wore $300 Italian suits and a blond wave in his processed hair.
To the FBI, the Panthers were homegrown terrorists who romanticized lawbreaking with overheated Marxist rhetoric. To O'Neal, who founded the Kansas City chapter of the party in early 1969, it represented a lifeline out of an abyss of drugs and aimlessness. He blazed with purpose: End racism and class inequality, fast.
"I would like very much to shoot my way into the House of Representatives," he declared in a televised interview, angry at a congressman who was investigating the Panthers. Pressed to clarify, he added: "I mean it literally."
He stormed into a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington, screaming accusations that the Kansas City police chief was funneling weapons to white supremacist groups.
Shortly afterward, a federal judge sentenced him to a four-year prison term on a conviction of transporting a shotgun across state lines. Out on bail, he decided to run. He and Charlotte fled in 1970 to Sweden, then to Algeria, and finally, in late 1972, to Tanzania, whose socialist government welcomed left-wing militants.
The O'Neals had $700. After a few years they bought a patch of inhospitable brush and volcanic rock in Imbaseni, a cobra-infested village of thatched-roof shacks in the country's remote northern interior. They were up before dawn, dancing with Al Jarreau on the tape deck, gathering locals for the day's work. Their two young African-born children, Malcolm and Stormy, carried bricks and water buckets.
Soon they had four walls, a roof, and little else. Plastic hung over the windows. No toilets
Soon they had four walls, a roof, and little else. Plastic hung over the windows. No toilets. It was the back-to-Africa experience so many black Americans talked about, minus the option of escape. They learned to grow corn and raise chickens. He jarred pickle relish, smoked sausages and bottled barbecue sauce for sale to local shops.
His temper was thunderous. When he heard something in Swahili that sounded offensive — such as wa-negro, a neutral description of black Americans implying no malice — he would scream, ready to fight.
"We were cowboys then," says Ikaweba Bunting, 63, a Compton-raised college professor who arrived in Tanzania in the 1970s and stayed for years. "We were big and hard-walking and hard-talking, and ready to beat people up — the whole street culture."
Exile was supposed to be temporary. O'Neal corresponded with other Panthers and planned to return home to help lead the revolution. He watched from abroad as the party collapsed from infighting, arrests and an FBI campaign of surveillance and sabotage. People stopped talking about revolution. Radicals found new lives.
O'Neal's exile became permanent. His fury abated. Some of it was age. Some of it was Tanzania, where strangers always materialized to push your Land Rover out of the mud, and where conflicts were resolved in community meetings in which everyone got to speak, interminably.
"It is so laid back, so reasonable, that to be otherwise makes you look, even to yourself, like a damn fool," O'Neal says.
Around that first crude brick structure, the fugitive improvised a little island of hope. He built a small recording studio for musicians and a workshop for artists. He gathered castoff computers and invited locals to come learn. He sank a well and opened the spigot to the village. It was, as he saw it, in the spirit of the free breakfast program he'd run as a Panther.
"He's had a chance to grow in a way that very few people get here," says his brother Brian O'Neal, 58, who lives in Kansas City.
Had he stayed in the States, Pete O'Neal believes, he'd be long dead from a shootout or street fight.
If exile saved him, it has also meant a life in which the sense of being a stranger never goes away.
"There's always a feeling of not being completely part of this culture. I know I am of a different tribe," he says. "People like me here, they love me, but I'm always other than."
Back in his house, he relaxes with a few shots of Jim Beam. He keeps a shotgun for snakes and a wall full of books. In mock-stentorian tones, he ridicules his early blood-soaked rhetoric. He puts a hand over his face, like an actor reminded of an embarrassing role, and says, "That was a man who was trying to find himself. He was trying to shed his skin, and emerge brand-new. I think he overstated and overacted."
For his radicalism itself, however, he won't apologize, even if — as he suspects — it is the one thing that might gain him safe entry back into the States.
"They will never convince me in my life," he says, "that what I was doing wasn't right."
All the orphans get a razored haircut -- both boys and girls -- and wash off the loose stubble under cold water at the tap. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
A few years back, an ambition seized him. The village had scores of destitute children, orphans from dirt-floor shacks and subsistence farms. He collected donations and built a concrete-block bunkhouse down near his tomato and pepper garden.
He spread word that he had room for a few kids. More than 100 appeared at his door, many shoeless. He had to send the majority away. The most desperate, a couple dozen, he informally adopted.
Now, they roam his grounds in lively packs, playing four square on the basketball court. They sleep in rows under malaria nets. Volunteers and a few staff members watch over the children and give them English and computer classes.
They call him Babu. Grandfather.
How big is the ocean?
So big you can't see across it.
Really?
So big you can go for weeks and never see land.
He shows them a globe.
See how much more ocean there is than land?
So is it bigger than Tanzania?
American high school students gather around Pete O'Neal in his compound's dining pavilion. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
The American high school students have questions, so he takes a seat before them. It's late, and he's weary, but this is his living. They want to know what country he belongs to, exactly.
He has no passport, he explains, and the Tanzanian government has rebuffed his efforts to become a citizen. "I'm not sure where the hell I belong at this particular point," he tells the students.
For years, he sought a way home. He found American lawyers willing to work for free to fight the gun charges. He would like to see his 91-year-old mother in Kansas City one last time.
His longing for the States comes at funny moments, as when he sees shrimp sailing through the air in Red Lobster commercials. He still dreams about the Kansas City he knew as a child, the bakeries and the public swimming pool and the ladies with their hats. But the city seems wrong, somehow, becoming weirdly unrecognizable.
In other dreams, he finds himself fleeing from things he can't see or name, urging his wife, "Charlotte, you gotta run!"
He regards his complex of bunkhouses, workshops and classrooms as "socialism in microcosm," he tells the students, though doctrinaire Marxism left him disillusioned. People, he concluded, are basically selfish.
Have his views on violence changed?
"I don't have the particular type of courage that would allow me to turn the other cheek."
One fresh-faced girl says she's been in Tanzania a week, and thinks it might be neat to move here. Does he recommend it?
Patiently, he replies: "It ain't that kind of party."
Of late, he tells the students, he's been haunted by the deaths of other exiled Panthers. One died in France last February, another in Zambia in October.
Then there was his close friend Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, the Panthers' former field marshal, who spent 27 years behind bars on a murder conviction before a California judge overturned it.
In 2002, Pratt bought a big farmhouse nearby with his false-imprisonment settlement, and O'Neal felt as though he'd rediscovered a lost brother. They drove through the village listening to Richard Pryor CDs, laughing until they wheezed and tears rolled down their cheeks.
Pratt was hospitalized with high blood pressure in May. He hated any confinement. He pulled out his IVs and went home. Days later, O'Neal found him on his side, dead in bed, just 63. His memorial would be tomorrow.
"People are dropping, man," he tells the students. He doesn't say that his thoughts were circling his own mortality so relentlessly that he couldn't sleep last night, and climbed out of bed to tally up what he would leave behind.
Pete O'Neal's four-acre compound bustles with visitors, some of them preparing dance routines for the memorial service for Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, the onetime Black Panther who died in his farmhouse down the road. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
Hundreds gather for Pratt's memorial service. O'Neal sits on the stage under the avocado tree and tells a few stories about their friendship: How Pratt always told him his toes were ugly. How they joked endlessly about who was the bigger hayseed.
Amid the prayers and the singing and the tributes, he manages to steal away for a few moments to inspect the bus. The seats are lined up in the dirt, ready to be scrubbed and resewn. The windows are taped up so the painting can begin. Panther colors: black and light blue.
He remembers discovering the ocean.
He was in his late teens, a heartland kid who believed his fearful precinct of Kansas City was the absolute center of the world, its ugliness and bigotry a true picture of the world. It is why, to his mind, violent revolution looked logical and inevitable.
Then he arrived in California to report for duty in the Navy, and turned his head and saw the Pacific. His breath was caught short by the immensity of it, all that blue stretching out into other lands, other stories. It was the start of a decades-long lesson that the world is bigger, more complicated and interesting than his little plot of bitter experience had led him to suspect.
His orphans have never left this inland region of cornfields and malarial swamps. They've never tasted salt water, or felt hot beach sand between their toes.
"They have no idea — no idea — what the ocean is," he says.
Nights and weekends, they pile into his living room and watch documentaries about sea life. He tells them about whales, giant squid, blind fish in the lightless deep. He regales them with shark stories.
Will they eat me?
If they're hungry enough, they'll try.
Because they don't like me?
No, it's the natural order of things.
Now and then he indulges in what he calls "Kansas City exaggeration," and even the majestic sea gets some burnishing. The sharks in his stories grow bigger than houses.
The kids study the TV. The sharks don't look that big.
OK. But they do have sharks bigger than that car.
The 29-seater is ready by late summer. The engine has been replaced, the dents in the body hammered out. The exterior has been sanded and smoothed, primed and painted, with a Panther emblem emblazoned beneath the big front window.
One day soon, he hopes to take the children southeast across the country to the Swahili Coast, with its coral reefs and pale sand and bright-painted old dhows. He planned to do it over Christmas, but a new pill regimen left him enervated. And money was short.
He'll need $2,000 for diesel fuel, food, tents. He hates to beg, but he believes the trip will be the culmination of every good instinct he's ever had — "The highest point in my life," he says — and he's calling in every favor.
His blood pressure, alarmingly high, keeps reminding him to be quick. "I could hear Geronimo say, 'We got a place reserved for you, come on down and keep me company.'" He told his friend no. Not yet.
In his sleep, the lions give chase. In the morning, he stands dreaming before the bus. They're running into the Indian Ocean, a man without a country surrounded by children who have barely seen theirs. He gives them the gift of an enlarged world, before his ends.
christopher.goffard@latimes.comCopyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
The original Black Panthers were not a racialist organisation. They were Maoists who believed that Black Americans were an 'oppressed nation'. They were allied to white student groups and had sympathisers and helpers among the 'socialist' countries.
They were not the Nation of Islam, didn't subscribe to bizarre racialist ideology.
They simply believed that the liberation of the 'oppressed nation' had to be done by those facing that oppression.
One of the founders of the BPP, Huey P. Newton, wrote in his book 'Seize the Time' that he had arguments with Black Cultural Nationalists over these very same issues. Huey wanted to apply what they saw as a Marxist approach to the question of Black oppression. Without racism.
Please do a little backround check before you condemn, sabretooth bro and probably a few other fellows round here
I hear a lot of talk about how he turned himself around and thats great..But he was part of a racially motivated group who used force to get their point across and the white counterpart the KKK has people who did good too are you going to report on them? Or how about convicts like me who have helped more people than you can count and gave out more than I had at times..Naw we are no body..thats just the way it is...
Good for O'Neill. Not many violent criminals manage to turn their lives around and do some good instead of remaining a drain on the resources of the world around them. I applaud his determination to spread some love instead of propogating the hatred. Those are some lucky youngsters he has raised. Too bad his exile prevents him from saying goodbye to him mom. In the long run, she succeeded in raising a decent human being.
>via: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-black-panther-20120129-ht...
Joel Augustus Rogers
(1883 to 1966)Joel Augustus Rogers was born September 6, 1883 at Negril, Jamaica. Very little is known about his early schooling. The historian is said to have had a "good basic education" but lacked higher formal education.
J.A. Rogers immigrated to the United States in 1906 and became a naturalized citizen in 1917. Despite his light complexion and mulatto background, Rogers bitterly discovered that Black people were all treated the same, no matter the complexion. Rogers, however, rejected the dogma of white superiority, even as a child. In a class and color conscious Jamaica, the young Rogers observed, "I had noticed that some of my schoolmates were unmixed blacks and were, some of them, more brilliant than some of the white ones." Rogers grew up around Blacks who were physicians and lawyers--graduates of "the best English and Scottish Universities." This realization that the doctrine of white superiority was contradicted by the talent and expertise of Black intellect inspired Rogers to begin his research into the Black experience.
J.A. Rogers published his first book, the 87 page "From Superman to Man" in 1917. At the time he wrote the book, he was working as a Pullman porter out of Chicago. Rogers had gone to Chicago to Study art. Rogers was one of the first and few African historians to use art extensively in helping to validate the achievements of African people.
J.A. Rogers' search for truth led him to examine the African blood lines of Europeans and Americans. His signal work, "Nature Knows No Color-Line" and the three-volume set, "Sex and Race" destroyed the myth of Aryan race purity.
Rogers' other historical focus was on producing biographical portraits of prominent African personages. In 1931, he published "The World's Greatest Men of African Descent" and in 1947, published "The World's Great Men of Color 3000 B.C. to 1946 A.D." Joel Augustus Rogers died on his birthday, September 6, 1966.
bio. written by by Runoko Rashidi
Your History: From Beginning of Time to the Present
Click to order Directly from Black Classic Press or AmazonPaperback: 100 pages
Publisher: Black Classic Press; Facsim.of 1940 Ed edition (June 1, 1983)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0933121040
ISBN-13: 978-0933121041
Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.2 x 0.3 inchesFirst published in 1940 and brought back into print by Black Classic Press in 1983, Your History commemorated the centennial anniversary of Rogers' birth.
Rogers, a self-taught historian, would write columns which were published weekly in Black newspapers across America and read by hundreds of thousands of Blacks.
Sample page from Your History: From Beginning of Time to the Present
As Nature Leads
Click to order Directly from Black Classic Press or AmazonPaperback: 207 pages
Publisher: Black Classic Press (March 1, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0933121156
ISBN-13: 978-0933121157
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inchesFirst published in 1919, Rogers focuses on the seldom discussed topic of Black "blood" in the white race. By exposing the extensive intermixture and intermarriage of Blacks and whites, Rogers attacks racist thought at its roots.
100 Amazing Facts about the Negro with Complete Proof
Click to order via AmazonISBN: 0960229477
Format: Paperback, 71pp
Pub. Date: January 1989 (originally published in 1934)
Publisher: Helga Rogers
Edition Description: REVISEDWritten in the 1940's and published in 1957.
Example:
BLACK FACT:
White American slave-holders used to induce white women to marry Negro slaves in order to hold the women slaves for life.PROOF:
In Sept. 1664, Maryland passed a law that any white woman who married a 'Negro' should serve the master of such slave "for life." Slave-holders took advantage of this law to induce the white women, some of whom were recent arrivals, to marry the "Negroes." MacCormac says, "Instead of preventing such marriages this law enabled avaricious and unprincipled masters to convert many of their (white) servants into slaves." In 1681, the Legislature was forced to issue the following law: "Divers freeborn English or white women sometimes by the instigation, procurement, and connivance of their master.... and always to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires....do intermarry with 'Negroes' and other slaves, be it enacted that if any master....having any freeborn English or white woman servant in their possession or property, shall by any instigation, procurement, knowledge, permission or contrivance," cause her to marry a slave she should be free at once and the master should pay a fine of "10,000 lbs. of tobacco." (Archives of Maryland, Vol. I, pp. 433-34; and Vol. III, pp. 203-04, also Johns Hopkins University Studies in Hist. & Pol. Science, No. 3 & 4.) What is true of Maryland was true of other states.
Five Negro Presidents
Click to order via AmazonBinding: Paperback
ISBN: 0960229485
Number Of Pages: 19
Publication Date: May 01, 1965
Publisher: Helga M. Rogers
Sex and Race: Negro-Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands : The Old World
Click to order via AmazonHardcover: 302 pages
Publisher: Helga M. Rogers (June 15, 1970)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 096022940X
ISBN-13: 978-0960229406
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas Vol, 2
Click to order via AmazonISBN: 0960229418
Format: Hardcover, 304pp
Pub. Date: January 1989
Publisher: Helga RogersSex and Race was published in three volumes from 1941 to 1944. The first volume focuses on antiquity and is arguably the most fundamental of the three. As to ancient Asia, for example, Rogers devoted several pages of Sex and Race to the Black presence in early Japan. In the process he cites the studies of a number of accomplished scholars and anthropologists, raising the question "were the first Japanese Negroes?"
Other chapters are devoted to "The Negro in Ancient Greece," "Negroes in Ancient Rome and Carthage" and "Were the Jews Originally Negroes?" The appendices of Sex and Race are equally fascinating, focusing on "Black Gods and Messiahs" and the "History of the Black Madonnas." In Volume Two of Sex and Race Rogers examines "racism and race-mixing in the New World," while Volume Three of Sex and Race seeks to define the concept of race itself. Like most of his works, all three volumes of Sex and Race are lavishly illustrated. 'Runoko Rashidi
Sex and Race: The Old World, Vol. 1
Click to order via AmazonISBN: 096022940X
Format: Hardcover, 411pp
Pub. Date: December 1990
Publisher: Helga RogersSex and Race: Why White and Black Do Mate, Vol. 3
Click to order via AmazonISBN: 0960229426
Format: Hardcover, 359pp
Pub. Date: November 1990
Publisher: Helga Rogers
From "Superman" to Man
Click to order via AmazonISBN: 0960229442
Format: Hardcover, 132pp
Pub. Date: January 1989
Publisher: Helga RogersThis short book follows a prolonged conversation on skin color prejudice between a white senator from the South and his widely traveled, well-read Black porter. Rogers himself worked as a Chicago porter and was largely self-educated. Toward the end of the book, Dixon, the porter, is asked if Christianity has not been a solace to mistreated Black people. Dixon echoes the feelings of his creator:
To enslave a man, then dope him to make him content! Do you call THAT a solace? . . . The honest fact is that the greatest hindrance to the progress of the Negro is that same dope that was shot into him during slavery. . . . The slogan of the Negro devotee is: Take the world but give me Jesus, and the white man strikes an eager bargain with him. . . . Another fact ' there are far too many Negro preachers. Religion is the most fruitful medium for exploiting this already exploited group. As I said, the majority of the sharpers, who among the whites would go into other fields, go, in this case, to the ministry.
'John Ragland (http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/ham)
Africa's Gift to America: The Afro-American in the Making and Saving of the United States : With New Supplement, Africa and Its Potentialities
Click to order via AmazonISBN: 0960229469
Format: Hardcover, 272pp
Pub. Date: January 1989
Publisher: Helga Rogers
Edition Description: REVISEDAfrica's Gift to America is another classic which should be added to the library of every serious student of African American history. He lays out in clear and fascinating detail the role of the African American from the founding of the nation in the 17th century through the Revolutionary War period to the Civil War and early Post-Civil War era. His use of first hand documents such as newspapers, magazines, political cartoons, journals, and his extensive citation to then-contemporary historical works is masterfully woven to create a rich historical tapestry. His mentioning of obscure historical facts such as the Corwin Amendment, the rejected original form of the 13th Amendment that would have preserved rather than abolished slavery, as well as the role of slave Jo Anderson in creating the McCormick reaper, are but a small sampling of the treasures within this invaluable volume.
Related links
Hitler and the Negro by J. A. Rodgers
http://www.nathanielturner.com/hitlerandnegro.htm
OKP Exclusive Video:
Erykah Badu
x Hudson Mohawke
+ Jamie Woon
Live in Madrid
Some exclusive video for you of Nu-Amerykahn goddess Erykah Badu performing an amazing set at the Teatro Circo Price in Madrid, Spain where she was participating in the most recent Red Bull Music Academy. In addition to crushing this 6+ minute version of “On & On” and “…& On” (above) she introduces some her favorite new artists, Jamie Woon and Hudson Mohawke, offering some interview-style insights in between performance clips (below). Dedicated students of Badu-ism will already know that she is a fearless champion of rising stars, making her a doubly appropriate speaker/headliner for the Music Academy, which of course is about to learning to channel your creative powers from the masters, Professor X style.
If you think you could be one of the New Mutants yourself, okayplayer is pleased to let you know that the application phase for the next Red Bull Music academy is about to begin. Interested vocalists, producers, musicians, instrumentalists, and DJs can download the application form from redbullmusicacademy.com starting this Thursday, February 2. Just send it off with a selection of your tunes by April 2, 2012 to be considered. Over the next couple months, Red Bull Music Academy Sessions will be held around the country, giving interested applicants a taste of what’s to come later this fall, when the Academy sets up shop here in New York City (again, all events will be posted at redbullmusicacademy.com)
DIONNE FARRIS - Live
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GUIDELINES FOR THE 2012 NAOMI LONG MADGETT POETRY AWARD (See important change to deadline date.) |
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This competition is open to African American poets only. If you have already had a book published by Lotus Press, you are ineligible. However, inclusion in a Lotus Press anthology does not disqualify you. Any other serious African American poet, whether previously published or not, may submit a book-length manuscript for consideration. Do not include essays, short fiction, or other material that is not poetry. Poems submitted by another person, anthologies, or collaborations by more than one poet are not acceptable. There is no reading fee; no payment is required. The poems in the manuscript should total approximately 60-90 pages, exclusive of a table of contents or other optional introductory material. Begin each poem, single-spaced, on a new page, no matter how short it maybe. If the poem is long, it may be continued on the next page(s). Use an easy-to-read font such as Times or Times Roman, size 11 or 12 point. Single-space except between stanzas. Poems that have been published individually in periodicals or anthologies are acceptable, but we will not consider an entire collection (or a significant portion of an entire collection) that has been previously published, whether self-published or not. Manuscripts entered in this competition may not be submitted to other publishers for general consideration but may be submitted to other contests, as long as you notify us that you have done so or plan to do so. If you are notified that your manuscript has won another competition, you MUST inform us of this immediately. Send two complete copies of your manuscript, typed or computer-generated, on White, letter-size paper, with the pages consecutively numbered, to the address below. Do not include your name on any of the pages. Include with each copy a cover sheet which contains the title of the collection only and no other information. On one separate sheet of paper, list: (1) the title of the manuscript; (2) your name, address, telephone number(s) and e-mail address, if you have one; and (3) a brief statement signed with your legal name, indicating that (a) all the poems in the collection are original and uncollected (not appearing in a published volume of your work) and (b) you are an African American. Keep a copy of your manuscript. Entries will not be returned. After the winner has been selected, all other manuscripts will be destroyed. You may enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard so that we may acknowledge receipt of your material. Mail your manuscript to the address below using first class priority mail. Award entries must be received between January 2 and March 1,2012. You will be notified of the winner's and the judges' names no later than June 1,2012. The decision of the judge is final. The award winner will receive $500 in cash and publication of the manuscript by Lotus Press, Inc. within the first three months of 2013. Failure to comply with these guidelines may cause your entry to be disqualified without notification. if you have any questions, please feel free to call or e-mail us for clarification. Mail material to: LOTUS PRESS, Inc., ATTN: Constance Withers, P.O. Box 21607, Detroit, MI 48221. Phone —(313) 861-1280 / E-Mail -lotuspress@comcast.net / Web site: www.lotuspress.org |
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OF THE NAOMI LONG MADGETT POETRY AWARD:
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Except for entries for this award, we are not considering any unsolicited manuscripts. We do not publish individual poems. |
Call for New Nigerian Writing
New Nigerian Writing is hosted by the ABC Literary Cafe at The Life House, and Kachifo Limited, publishers of Farafina Books. This event will provide an opportunity for emerging Nigerian writers to showcase their work and be exposed to critique and feedback from established writers.
Emerging writers are requested to submit any piece of prose of no more than 5,000 words. Thirty pieces will be selected from the submissions, and the writers will be invited to read five minutes of their work during the event. Our panel of distinguished writers will be on hand to critique their work on both days of the event. The thirty selected pieces will be subject to further editing and review by both the panel and Kachifo Limited, and the top fifteen will be included in an e-book of short stories to be released later in 2012. The stories not selected for publication in the short story collection will be published on the Farafina blog. The closing date for submission is February 5, 2011.
The New Nigerian Writing readings will be held at The Life House, 33 Sinari Daranijo Street, off Younis Bashorun Street, off Ajose Adeogun Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. The dates are February 10 and February 24; the time is 6pm.
Submissions should be sent by email to shortstories@kachifo.com. All submissions should include the name, phone number and email address of writers. Selected writers should be available to read their work at the events, or have a representative available to read on their behalf.
2012 Prize
Kundiman and Alice James Books accepted submissions of poetry manuscripts for The Kundiman Poetry Prize electronically and by regular mail through March 1, 2012.
Alice James Books is a cooperative poetry press with a mission is to seek out and publish the best contemporary poetry by both established and beginning poets, with particular emphasis on involving poets in the publishing process.
Guidelines for Electronic Manuscript Submission
Kundiman and Alice James Books are pleased to announce that, in addition to submitting your manuscript via regular mail, you may now enter your manuscript to The Kundiman Prize electronically.
Guidelines for Print Manuscript Submission
- Manuscripts must be typed, paginated, and 50 – 70 pages in length (single spaced).
- Individual poems from the manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, anthologies, or chapbooks of less than 25 pages, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Translations and self-published books are not eligible. No multi-authored collections, please.
- Manuscripts must have a table of contents and include a list of acknowledgments for poems previously published. The inclusion of a biographical note is optional. Your name, mailing address, email address and phone number should appear on the title page of your manuscript. MANUSCRIPTS CANNOT BE RETURNED. Please do not send us your only copy.
- No illustrations, photographs or images should be included.
- Send one copy of your manuscript submission with two copies of the title page. Use only binder clips. No staples, folders, or printer-bound copies.
- The Kundiman Poetry Prize is judged by consensus of the members of Kundiman's Artistic Staff and the Alice James Books Editorial Board. Manuscripts are not read anonymously. Learn more about our judging process.
- For notification of winners, include a business-sized SASE. If you wish acknowledgment of the receipt of your manuscript, include a stamped addressed postcard. Winners will be announced in June 2011.
- Entry fee for The Kundiman Poetry Prize is $28. Checks or money orders should be made out to Alice James Books. On the memo line of your check write The Kundiman Poetry Prize.
- Mail your entry to:
Kundiman
P.O. Box 4248
Sunnyside, NY 11104Checklist for entry:
- One (1) copy of manuscript enclosed, with acknowledgements and two (2) copies of title page
- $28 entry fee
- Business sized SASE
- Stamped addressed postcard
- Postmarked by March 1, 2012
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