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The Life of Grace Lee Boggs, a Leader in the Black Power Movement
Grace Lee Boggs, who died Monday at the age of 100, knew every major black leader and luminary worth knowing from the 1930s to the 1960s, and a little beyond. Here’s some proof: She and her husband, fellow activist Jimmie Boggs, assisted Malcolm X and saw him whenever he was in Detroit during the short…
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History Repeats Itself With Backlash Against Black Empowerment
What has made the 21st century so interesting is that, perhaps for the first time in American history, the right people are being studied. Examining “race in America,” now in vogue, used to be called grappling with “the Negro problem.” Black leadership and luminaries were ignored when they repeatedly said during the last century’s white…
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Jimmy Carter’s Last Battle: Eradicating an African Disease
Former President Jimmy Carter told the world Thursday that he is fighting a spreading cancer. But, really, as he said, the fighting part was going to be left to his doctors. The former Georgia governor and current Sunday school teacher said his role was to be a good, obedient patient. However, Carter did identify to…
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Julian Bond’s ‘Comic’ Stance on the Vietnam War
Say the name aloud of our new ancestor, Julian Bond, and generations of black Americans will think of a clear, proud voice. For some, they hear the sophisticated trumpet for justice as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the rabble-rousing, hell-raising civil rights organization that pushed Martin Luther King Jr. into militancy and,…
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Former Black Panther Paul Coates Remembers Charm City, Circa 1968
More than 100 cities, including Baltimore, caught fire when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. That year saw the fourth straight “long, hot summer”—the fourth time black communities had erupted in major American cities, with police brutality and poverty as the front-and-center issues. With mainstream media recalling 1968’s rebellions in light of Monday’s…
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Before Dyson and West: Remembering Black Luminaries’ ‘Rap Battles’
So you think the Michael Eric Dyson article on Cornel West in the New Republic is a tough one? As well as his tell-all interview with The Root? If so, you must not remember the political cartoon from Muhammad Speaks (the newspaper Malcolm X founded in his basement), which was published during the time Malcolm X…
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What Diabetes-Ravaged Mumia Abu-Jamal Looks Like Now
New photos of an apparently frail and ill Mumia Abu-Jamal, with visibly darkened, hardened skin as a result of complications from diabetes, were released Tuesday morning via email by his supporters, friends and family. They are continuing to maintain a vigil outside State Correctional Institution Mahanoy, the Pennsylvania prison where the 60-year-old former Black Panther…
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Dr. Ben, One of the Last ‘People’s Scholars’ of Harlem, Joins the Ancestors
Yosef ben-Jochannan, one of the last of the Harlem activist-intellectuals of the 20th century—those fiery, independent scholars who taught classical African history and shaped it into a sword against white supremacy—died Thursday after a long illness. He was 96. The man known as Dr. Ben joined his ancestors the morning of the first day of…
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Malcolm X Speaks of the Soulful, Soothing Power of Jazz
Malcolm X is being remembered this week across black America on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. It is a sober time to commemorate the murder of a sober, serious man who fought for the liberation of African people. But he was a man—one who had a great sense of humor, a winning smile, and…
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That Time Carter G. Woodson Hired Langston Hughes for His 1st Real Job
This year is the 100th anniversary of what is now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the organization founded by Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950). Woodson is the founder of Negro History Week, which he created in 1926. It’s officially been known as Black History Month since 1976. Woodson had many…
