Category Archives: Slavery

Exploring Book Bans: The Impact on Black Literature

Posted on February 3, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On a recent summer trip to Virgina, where one could argue that it all began in 1619, that is, the enslavement of Africans in what would become the United States of America, I stopped at a Barnes & Noble. During … Continue reading →

Posted in Black History Month, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Martin Luther King, Politics, race, Religion, Slavery | Tagged 1619, 1619 Project, Alice Walker, Banned books, Barnes & Noble, Black Wall Street, Cesar Chavez, Florida, Kansas, Lorraine Hansberry, Martin Luther King Jr., Oklahoma, PEN America, Pennsylvania, Rosa Parks, Rosewood, Texas, The Birth of a Nation, The Clansman, The Fire Next Time, Thomas Dixon Jr., Through the Fire, Toni Morrison, Virginia | 1 Comment

Rereading Richard Wright’s Black Boy

Posted on July 12, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

When I first read Richard Wright’s Black Boy more than 40 years ago when I was a teenager, little that I knew about literature, I thought the writing was superb. I was doing a little writing then and thought Wright … Continue reading →

Posted in being a teenager, Black patriotism, crime, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Growing Up, raising black boys, Relationships, Slavery | Tagged Black Boy, Confederacy, Confederate flag, Nashville TN, New South, North Carolina, Richard Wright, Segregation, Strange Fruit, Virginia, World War II | 1 Comment

A Red Record Redux

Posted on May 30, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, in A Red Record (1895), about the bloody murders of Black people at the hands of white people, lists three “excuses” white people gave for the wholesale murder of Black people by whites. The excuses are: …the … Continue reading →

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Martin Luther King, Politics, race, raising black boys, Relationships, Revolution, Slavery, Streets of Rage | Tagged A Red Record, Al Capone, American Fiction, Christiaen van Couwenbergh, Civil War, EJI, Equal Justice Initiative, Fifteenth Amendment, Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Ku Klux Klan, miscegenation, No Negro Domination, Reconstruction, Regulators, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rudy Giuliani, The Rape of the Negro Girl, Trump | Leave a comment

The Writing Life: Writing An Award-Winning Epic Poem

Posted on May 13, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My epic poem, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present, was a co-winner of the 1998 Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize for an epic poem on the theme, “the captivity, exploitation, and suffering of … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, Slavery | Tagged 1998 Edwin Mellen Poetr Prize, Africa's Gifts to America, American Civil War, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass; Slavery; Edwin Mellen Poetry Press, Hayes-Tilden Compromise, J.A. Rogers, James Weldon Johnson, Lift Every Voice and Sing, Rene Descartes, Sex & Race, Swing Low, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Picture of Dorian Grray, W.E.B. DuBois | 1 Comment

Daddy Dearest

Posted on February 22, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My father, a Native Southern Son, was born in the same month and year Negro History Week was established. Then, we were Negroes. Thirty-four years later, when I was born, we were still Negroes. When my father died at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Lest We Forget, race, raising black boys, Relationships, Slavery | Tagged 1960s, Black Arts Era, Civil War, Confederacy, Decisive Decade, Emmett Till, Fourth of July, Jim Crow, NOrth Carolina Governor Michael Easley, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II | 3 Comments

From the American Revolution to the Black Arts Cultural Revolution

Posted on February 21, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

After the American Revolution, most of the defining moments in American history involve or revolve around Black people. Black folk were even involved in the American Revolution, fighting on both sides – the British promised Africans and the descendants of … Continue reading →

Posted in Black patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Growing Up, John F. Kennedy, Lest We Forget, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Nation of Islam, Patriotism, Poetry, Politics, race, Revolution, Slavery, Streets of Rage, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged 1619, 1619 Project, American Revolution, Boston Massacre, Camelot, Crispus Attucks, JFK, Larry Neal, RFK, The Black Arts Era | Leave a comment

Happy Valentine’s Day to African American Literature!

Posted on February 14, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Since it is Valentine’s Day, I dare to say that I have an ongoing love affair with African American literature. And, once again, I am teaching African American Literature in the 20th Century for another college. (I previously taught it … Continue reading →

Posted in Black patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, Slavery | Tagged African American Literature, Amherst method, Andra Day, Black National Anthem, Black Poetics, Booker T. Washington, Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America -- An Anthology, Eurocentric, Henry Louis Gates, Herb Boyd, James Weldon Johnson, Larry Neal, Lift Every Voice and Sing, Robert L Allen, Some Reflections on the Black Aesthetic, The Black Arts Movement, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Three Negro Classics, Toni Morrison, Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The African American Presence in American Literature, Valentine's Day, Valerie A Smith, WEB DuBois | 2 Comments

Correcting The Miseducation of the Negro

Posted on February 3, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Carter G. Woodson’s seminal book, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926, is a book Black folk should periodically revisit, perhaps every three years, ideally every year. If you are Black and you have not read the book, then … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Education, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, raising black boys, Slavery | Tagged 1619 Project, Aristotelian Logic, Aunt Jemima, Black History Month, Brown v. Board of Education, Candace Owens, Carter G. Woodson, Clarence Thomas, Classical Rhetoric, Compulsory Education Act (1852), General Grammar, Jim Crow, Nicholas Capaldi, Plessy v. Ferguson, Russell Sage College, The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, The Miseducation of the Negro, Tribium, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, Uncle Tom | 4 Comments

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 Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, race, Slavery | Tagged Billie Holliday, cancel culture, Carter G. Woodson, Civil War, Critical Race Theory, Day of the Rope, DEI, Harvard University, Howard University, Lynching, Miseducation of the Negro, Strange Fruit, Toni Morrison | 5 Comments

Virginia on My Mind

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

There is something that keeps drawing me back to Virginia. Although my father was born in North Carolina, he grew up in Virginia and returned there in 1946 after he was discharged from the segregated U.S. Army. He was drafted … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Genealogy, Growing Up, race, Slavery | Tagged 1960s, Bath County, Decisive Decade, Native Southern Sons, North Carolina, Red Summer, Segregation, Virginia, World War I, World War II | 1 Comment

	William Eric Waters,… on Journey Through Crime, Justice…
	Michael Pass on Journey Through Crime, Justice…
	markchap1045 on Journey Through Crime, Justice…
	Journey Through Crim… on Journey Through Crime, Justice…
	Michael Pass on Journey Through Crime, Justice…