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Nat King Cole and Hip-Hop Soul
Nat King Cole died, too soon, in February 1965, of lung cancer at the age of 45. He left behind a body of work that embraces the American songbook and exotic rhythms outside America, and it continues to endear him to millions. An archetype of sleek, musical cool, Cole’s influence remains, to borrow a word,…
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Black Man on Top of the World
“I was in the lead that had overshot the mark a couple of miles,” Matthew Henson told a reporter in March 1955, relating the moment when, 46 years earlier, he knew he had conquered the world. “We went back then, and I could see that my footprints were the first at the spot.” “The spot”…
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Broadsheetless in Seattle?
Seattle, city of iconoclasts and wired pioneers, is embarking on a new frontier in journalism, as the home of the first major metropolitan daily, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, switches from print to an entirely online format—a bold, economically driven departure in publishing, and one that is already being closely watched by media companies and analysts.…
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The End of Black History Month
When author and history professor Carter G. Woodson created what would become Black History Month in February 1926, America’s black citizens were on the outside looking in, spectators to the great American drama, subjected to a repression of aspiration and identity so severe that it amounted to domestic apartheid. Lynchings were so common that the…
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The Gifted Ones
In November 1969, the great Nina Simone released what would be her entrée to mainstream popular culture, one of her biggest selling records ever, and an anthem of a movement that, robbed of its messenger 19 months earlier in Memphis, still carried forth his message: To be young, gifted and blackIs where it’s at. The…
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The All-American Family Crisis
If there was ever any doubt about Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to connect with the American people, as his strategically brilliant campaign has shown he’s capable of doing, that doubt should soon be put to rest, in the wake of a personal tragedy now facing the Democratic nominee—the same tragedy faced by millions of Americans…
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Hendrix Lives
Defined by the chaos of a presidential campaign under literal siege, an unpopular foreign war and the compound tragedies of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the year 1968 was a pivot point in the national life—the year America almost stopped being America. Part of that upheaval was cultural. The…
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Oh, Lord, Kumbaya
At this moment in history when we may need it most, “Kumbaya,” a folk song that started its life as a quiet prayer and became a spiritual rallying cry for millions during some of this nation’s grimmest days, has morphed into something that couldn’t have been imagined during your Boy or Girl Scout days: a…
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Just His Imagination
They buried Norman Whitfield on Saturday. He died in Los Angeles of complications from diabetes on Sept. 16. He was 68 years old. The name of the dear departed and the fact of his passing generated scant attention in today’s breathless mediascape. But in a year already crowded with mourning, this was another huge loss…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
