Malcolm X
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 8: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley)
Publisher Synopsis: In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a…
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‘Hang the Whites’: Rapper’s Hate Speech Trial Exposes the Hypocrisy of Race Relations in France
The music video for 34-year-old French rapper Nick Conrad’s “Pendez les Blancs” (“Hang the Whites”) opens with a jarring visual akin to the title itself: the lifeless body of a white man on a noose, while Conrad (a black man of Cameroonian descent) stands beside him lighting a cigar. It’s a role reversal intended to…
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The Blackest Intersection in America Exists in Washington, DC
It’s no secret that I live in Washington, D.C. While I’ve had a love-hate relationship with this city for various reasons, it’s home. No matter where I go in the world, even when I’m back in Atlanta or Madison/Huntsville, Ala., at this point in life, D.C. is home. I’ve lived in the D.C. urea for…
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Long-Lost Writings of Malcolm X Find a Home in Harlem
At a Manhattan auction house on Thursday, a missing chapter from Malcolm X’s autobiography, as well as a manuscript for the book containing notes exchanged between Malcolm X and his collaborator, Alex Haley, were sold to one of the country’s foremost institutions chronicling the African diaspora. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, located…
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Malcolm X Matters: Icon’s Words Still Ring True
As the #BlackLivesMatter movement continues to grow in strength like the perfect storm, the prescient words of Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) slice with laser-sharp precision through the rhetoric of politicians and pundits alike as if he still walked among us. He was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Neb., and he…
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‘If God Is White, Kill God’: Why Dr. James Cone Was Once the Most Hated Theologian in America
I had just returned to New York City from delivering the 2018 Trout Lectures at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, when I received word that my beloved professor, now colleague and friend, Dr. James Hal Cone had died. In 2012, Dr. Cone had been invited to lecture at Trinity Lutheran but had to cancel…
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Unpopular Black History Opinion: Jackie Robinson May Have Been an Opp
During Black History Month, there are a few obligatory staples and customs that all black kids in America come to expect: the Black History Month assembly where a vivacious and chubby child recites Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech or Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” with the cadence of a LisaRaye performance; brief…
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Malcolm X Tells His Story in New Documentary Featuring Rarely and Never-Before-Seen Footage
In front of a rapt audience at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Malcolm X’s third daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, talked about witnessing the assassination of her father at Harlem’s Audubon Theatre and Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965. “I’m told my mother placed her entire body over my sisters and me that…
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Legacy, Legacy, Legacy: What Best Befits a Civil Rights Icon?
As we wrap up the biannual phenomenon known as New York Fashion Week, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the amount of new fashion and trends we saw on the runways, forecasting what is to come in Fall/Winter 2018. But since we here at The Glow Up sit at the intersection of Fashion Week and Black…
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From Wannabes to Wakanda: Ruth E. Carter Costumes Our Cultural Consciousness
Ruth E. Carter’s résumé reads like a list of iconic favorites from contemporary black cinema. In the 30 years since her first film, Spike Lee’s 1988 hit, School Daze, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated costume designer has amassed more than 60 film and television credits, including I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988); Do the Right Thing (1989);…