Category: The African World

I have heard some commentators refer to the Occupy Wall Street and other such efforts at the “US Autumn.” I have been reflecting on that phrasing. I assume they mean that this rising is taking place in the autumn but I still do not like the imagery. We are either looking at a “January Thaw”…

To readers of my column ‘African World’: I wanted to send this note of apology for not having written anything for BC in quite some time. I have been asked to write a book by Beacon Press and i have a very tight deadline. The combination of my day job plus writing this manuscript have…

I have been trying to figure out the current Republican approach to government and it finally hit me. There is a peculiar mix of the theory of the Kamikaze pilot and the approach of the Nazi Party in the Reichstag pre-1933. Let me explain. At the end of World War II Japan was in desperate…

I read, with interest, Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad’s piece “The Curious Case of Curt Flood: HBO Documentary misses the point.“. Dr. Samad was highly critical of the documentary, feeling that it tore down Curt Flood and did not make a case for Flood going into the Baseball Hall of Fame. With due respect to Dr.…

I recently returned from North Africa and Palestine. I found myself giving a talk to a group in the USA where I mentioned my trip as a way of discussing the manner in which events can unfold very rapidly. I mentioned that I had been to North Africa and the occupied Palestinian territories. Barely had…

On the day of Manning Marable’s death, April 1, 2011, I received an additional piece of disturbing information. A friend of mine informed me of a discussion he had just had with a Black activist-writer who, in hearing about Marable’s passing, went into what could only be described as a rant against Marable. Marable’s body…

Just as the people of the world owe a debt of gratitude to the masses in the Arab World who have stood up against tyranny, we in the USA owe a debt of gratitude to the thousands of people in Wisconsin who stood up against the domestic tyranny of the Scott Walker administration. The courage…

It is eerie to find myself writing, again, about death. In April, my long-time friend, Manning Marable, passed away. A few weeks ago, Gil Scott-Heron passed, followed the next week by Geronimo Pratt. In each case I decided that I needed to write something for BC. On Saturday afternoon, at 5:19pm, after a brief illness,…

Losing Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt the week after the loss of Gil Scott-Heron felt like a body blow. As of this writing, no indication has been offered as to what led to Geronimo’s death. For most of us who came of age politically in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Geronimo held a special place. His role…

When I received word of the passing of noted poet and singer Gil Scott-Heron I felt as if I had just heard about the death of a college friend whom I had not seen in many years. Perhaps it was because I actually got to know the work of Gil Scott-Heron while I was in…