Understandably, millions of people across the world were elated by the news of Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the death of George Floyd. For almost a year, the world has been painfully anticipating the verdict, hoping for the justice that prevailed on April 20th when Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/us/chauvin-guilty-verdict-sentencing.html …
“This is my alma mater.” “I love the university” … it was embarrassing to be the first person to be denied tenure. It was embarrassing, and I didn’t want this to become a public scandal…It’s pretty clear that my tenure was not taken up because of political opposition, because of discriminatory views against my viewpoint and, I believe, [because of] my race and my gender.”
- Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones threw a fierce curveball on CBS This Morning https://youtu.be/RRRs6iEyBHY on July 6th when she revealed to Gayle King that she was declining the belated offer of tenure from the University…
It was to be expected (at least if you live in present-day America) that Gwen Berry would become the target of invective from millions of Americans outraged by the fact that she refused to salute the national anthem http://a.msn.com/02/en-us/AALvonX?ocid=st. Berry is a hammer thrower who participated in the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Portland, Oregon on June 26th. She is also Black. Therein lies the controversy for some.
If you are over 35 and have not been hiding under a gigantic rock infested with mold, you are familiar with the term Generation X. The 46 million Americans born between 1965 and 1980. The men and women who were referred to as latchkey kids, slackers, caffeine lovers, grunge, indie, or anything that bordered on the avant-garde in some form or fashion. Oh! Let’s not forget our fascination https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/10/27/tony-bennett-sways-the-hip/17aa7a5e-0590-4c00-8ba3-49ce70d2c296/?tid=ss_tw with the smooth, silent generation crooner, Tony Bennett (b. 1926).
We are a generation that has been routinely pegged as cynical, self-indulgent, aimless, contrarian, and often peripheral when it comes to…
Publisher: Bordighera Press (Fred Gardaphe), Audible audiobook (August) by Frank Franconeri
The promotional material for Marc DiPaolo’s Fake Italian touts it as a book that reads like something co-written by Lenny Bruce and James Joyce, and that is a fair starting point for a discussion of this prolific academic writer’s first novel. The book is simultaneously epic in scope and feeling and intimate and accessible in tone. …
CNN, PBS, The History Channel, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and the Washington Post were among the sizable number of media outlets that devoted considerable attention to the centennial of the Tulsa race massacre. The Tulsa race massacre was a racially directed American pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 300 people and annihilated the laboriously amassed wealth of an entire community and that, save for sporadic mentions, had gone largely ignored for 100 years.
From May 31 to June 1, 1921, supporters of local and prominent Tulsa political figures stormed into Tulsa’s Greenwood District, better known to…
The late comedian Flip Wilson, who died in 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/27/arts/flip-wilson-outrageous-comic-and-tv-host-dies-at-64.html?smid=tw-share became the first black entertainer to host a successful weekly variety show on network television. The Flip Wilson Show ran from 1970–1974 and Wilson was one of the most innovative comics of his day.
To me, beauty pageants are a matter of choice. The feminist movement was about choice. While I do have issues with child pageants, the fact is that If an adult woman decides to enter a pageant that is fine with me. She is an adult able to make her choice. It is her choice, not yours or mine.
Chaka Khan can sing like nobody's business!!! She is considered the wild child of R& B.
Elwood Watson, Ph.D.
Historian, public speaker, social-cultural critic. Professor of African American and Gender Studies, Post-WWII U.S. History, at East Tennessee State University.
