Category Archives: Race, History & American Society

Writing on race, Black history, slavery, segregation, civil rights, white supremacy, racial inequality, historical memory, and the continuing influence of American history on contemporary society.

The Assassination of Dr. King – My first “political memory”

Posted on April 4, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My first political memory, at age 7, is the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I was too young to remember the assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X, and although RFK would be assassinated later in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Growing Up, Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society, raising black boys, Revolution, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged Andrew Goodman, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Decisive Decade, Growing Up, James Chaney, Jim Crow, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Schwerner, Mississippi Burning, murder, Poetry, raising black boys, Robert F. Kennedy, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, The Black Blood of Poetry, urban decay | 1 Comment

Happy Birthday to Black History Month!

Posted on February 7, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Black History Month is nearly 100 years old! Granted, it began as Black History Week, on February 7, 1926, and didn’t become Black History Month until February 10, 1976. My father, a Native Southern Son, was born in the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Education & Teaching, Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black History Month, Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, fathers, Frederick Douglass, Gerald Ford, Growing Up, Lost Cause, Martin Luther King Jr., Negro History Week, patriotism, raising black boys, segregated U.S. Army, The Miseducation of the Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois, What is the Fourth of July to the Negro?, World War II | 2 Comments

Black Fruit, Strange Fruit

Posted on February 6, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My first book, the award-winning epic poem, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present, deals with the theme(s) of “the captivity, exploitation and suffering of Black people in America.” But not all of … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Equal Justice Initiative, murder, Strange Fruit, White Mob Lynches Thomas Brown on Courthouse Lawn in Nicholasville KY | 1 Comment

Black History: “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud!”

Posted on February 4, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My first three posts this Black History Month have invoked Carter G. Woodson, “the father of Black history,” and his seminal work, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926. Most importantly, Woodson, the creator of Black History Month, gave Black … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged 1619 Project, Alexander Hamilton High School, Bach, Black history, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Carter G. Woodson, Critical Race Theory, Diana Ross, I.S. 318, James Brown, Paul Robeson High School, PS 148, The Miseducation of the Negro, Touch Me in the Morning, W. E. B. Du Bois | 1 Comment

From The Miseducation of the Negro to Critical Race Theory

Posted on February 2, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Carter G. Woodson, “the father of Black History,” wrote The Miseducation of the Negro in 1926. Woodson earned his PhD from Harvard University, and during his academic career served as the Dean of Howard University, an historically Black research university, established … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged Billie Holiday, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, cancel culture, Carter G. Woodson, Civil War, Critical Race Theory, Day of the Rope, DEI, Harvard University, Howard University, Lynching, Slavery, Strange Fruit, The Miseducation of the Negro, Toni Morrison | 5 Comments

Remembering My Father as I Remember Maceo Snipes, Black Veteran, Shot to Death After Voting in Georgia Primary — July 18, 1946

Posted on July 19, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

As a teenager my father, a Native Southern Son (NC and VA), was drafted to serve in the segregated U.S. Army during World War II. Shortly after he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946, he moved to Brooklyn, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Family, fathers, Growing Up, Maceo Snipes, murder, raising black boys, Relationships, Segregation, The Black Vote, World War II | Leave a comment

The Inexplicable Endurance of the N Word

Posted on June 9, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

As some of you know, I am currently teaching a course, African American Literature in the 20th Century, for Bennington College. The primary text for the course is The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 3rd Edition. In the anthology … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Die Nigger Die!, H. Rap Brown, James Weldon Johnson, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Norton Anthology of African American Literature, passing, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | 2 Comments

The Pledge of Allegiance, Little White Lies, and All that Jazz!

Posted on March 7, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

It has been more than 50 years since I was in elementary school in the New York City public school system, yet I remember, word for word, the “Pledge of Allegiance.” At this time, I thought nothing of it, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice Chronicles, Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society, Streets of Rage | Tagged 13th Amendment, Atomic Bomb, Black Codes, Black Power, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Camelot, Confederate States of America, Critical Race Theory, Culture Wars, Great Society, Growing Up, Hiroshima, internment of Japanese Americans, James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Little White Lies, Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Nagasaki, patriotism, Pledge of Allegiance, raising black boys, Richard Nixon, Robert F. Kennedy, Segregation, Slave Codes, Slavery, urban decay, war on crime, World War II | Leave a comment

Racial Reckoning & Reparations

Posted on February 24, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

As a society, we (Americans) have talked about a “racial reckoning,” and reparations for the descendants of Africans who built this country. Neither a racial reckoning nor reparations have happened. A racial reckoning has not happened because most white folk … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Bryan Stevenson, Critical Race Theory, Equal Justice Initiative, Esperanto, Manifest Destiny, racial Esperanto, racial reckoning, reparations, Slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois, White Man's Burden | 2 Comments

The Nineteen Sixties

Posted on June 7, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I have written elsewhere about the “Decisive Decade,” a phrase coined by Samuel Yette, about the 1960s. I found this poem, “SOS,” by Imamu Amiri Baraka, in The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall, in the section about poetry of … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature & Cultural Criticism, Race, History & American Society | Tagged Amiri Baraka, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Dudley Randall, mass murder in Buffalo, Poetry, The Black Poets, white supremacy | Leave a comment

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