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Category Archives: Slavery
Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature – The Series
In this series, I trace how a teenage brush with homicide headlines became a lifelong interrogation of justice. From police tape and tabloid “if it bleeds, it leads” narratives to courtrooms, prisons, and the literature that wrestles with guilt, I ask what truth survives punishment. Along the way, I revisit forgotten voices, personal losses, and hard-earned lessons—seeking a language that honors victims, confronts systems, and insists on humanity, story at a time, without flinching. Continue reading
Posted in being a teenager, Black History Month, Education, ezwwaters, Genealogy, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, Life Sentences, Martin Luther King, Murder, Parole, parole board, Politics, race, raising black boys, Reentry, remorse, Segregation, Slavery, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage, The Black Blood of Poetry, urban decay, Urban Impact
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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part IV
I began writing this fourth and “final” installment of “Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature” on Martin Luther King Day. I re-read Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (16 April 1963), not for purposes of this series, but on this … Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Martin Luther King, raising black boys, Slavery, Streets of Rage, urban decay, Urban Impact
Tagged 13th, 13th Amendment, 1863 Craft Riots, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ava DuVernay, Black Codes, Charles Hynes, Conviction Integrity Unit, Darryl Alston, De Profundis, Dostoevsky, EJI, Gustave de BHZeaumont, Hillary Clinton, hyperincarceration, Johnson Crime Commission, Jonathan fleming, Kenneth Thompson, LBJ, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Loic Wacquant, mass incarceeration, Michael G. Pass, Nuremberg, Oscar Wilde, Post-Reconstruction, prison industrial complex, Reconstruciton, Red Summer, richard nixon, Rosewood massacre, Sara Mayeux, school-to-prisoh pipeline, The House of the Dead, Tulsa Race Riot, war on crime, War on Drugs
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Revisiting _The Miseducation of the Negro_ This Black History Month
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, african-american, Aristotelian Logic, Aunt Jemima, Black history, Black History Month, Brown v. Board of Education, Candace Owens, Carter G. Woodson, Clarence Thomas, Classical Rhetoric, Compulsory Education Act (1852), culture, General Grammar, history, 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, writing
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Daddy Dearest
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, history, Jim Crow, NOrth Carolina Governor Michael Easley, politics, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Slavery, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II
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Rereading Richard Wright’s Black Boy
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
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The Writing Life: Writing An Award-Winning Epic Poem
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
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Daddy Dearest
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
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From the American Revolution to the Black Arts Cultural Revolution
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
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