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Tag Archives: Civil War
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 Family, Memory & Personal Essays, raising black boys
Tagged 1960s, Black Arts Era, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederacy, Decisive Decade, Emmett Till, Family, fathers, Fourth of July, history, Jim Crow, Michael Easley, politics, raising black boys, Relationships, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Slavery, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II
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A Red Record Redux
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 Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society, Streets of Rage
Tagged 15th Amendment, A Red Record, Al Capone, American Fiction, Christiaen van Couwenbergh, Civil War, Donald Trump, Equal Justice Initiative, Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, Ida B. Wells, Ku Klux Klan, Martin Luther King Jr., miscegenation, No Negro Domination, raising black boys, Reconstruction, Regulators, Relationships, Rudy Giuliani, Slavery, The Rape of the Negro Girl
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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 Politics & Public Affairs
Tagged 1998 Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize, Africa's Gift to America, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Hayes-Tilden Compromise, J.A. Rogers, James Weldon Johnson, Lift Every Voice and Sing, Rene Descartes, Sex & Race, Slavery, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Picture of Dorian Gray, W. E. B. Du Bois
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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 Family, Memory & Personal Essays
Tagged 1960s, Black Arts Era, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederacy, Decisive Decade, Emmett Till, Family, fathers, Fourth of July, Jim Crow, Michael Easley, raising black boys, Relationships, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Slavery, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II
3 Comments
Happy Birthday to Black History Month!
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
From The Miseducation of the Negro to Critical Race Theory
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
The Work of Reconstruction Continues. . .
Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, by W.E.B. DuBois, is a must read. One Amazon reviewer wrote, “This book is a great clue to the puzzle of how we got where we are today.” Indeed, this period would inform the next … Continue reading
A Brief History of the Hayes-Tilden Compromise
In order to understand the pathology of memorializing treasonous Confederates, look to the Hayes-Tilden Compromise (1876-77), which in effect ended the Reconstruction years (1865-1877), when Black people made tremendous strides, politically, economically, and socially, a mere 12 years after 246 … Continue reading
Posted in Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society
Tagged 1619, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederate memorials, Confederate Monuments, Confederate States of America, Confederate statues, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Hayes-Tilden Compromise, Jamestown, Malcolm X, patriotism, Plymouth Rock, Reconstruction, Slavery
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The “Cancel-culture” Conundrum
If I hear one more white person say “Cancel-culture…” “Cancel-culture” is the latest buzz term being used by Trumpeteers, including Ivanka Trump, and as with almost everything that comes out of the Oval Office in these times, it’s a false … Continue reading
William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters 