Tag: Black manhood

Through Black labor, Black love, Black life and Black presence, Wanda Sabir presents jewels for honoring, learning, enjoying and discovering, by enticing our exploration in this month of Women’s History Day, International Women’s History Month, the still unfolding of story of Malcom X and struggle for liberation and self-determination through writers like Walter Mosley, theater from Oakland Theater Project, a cross-country experience with the Diamano Coura West African Dance Company and more.

Congratulations to Brothers in Pen for a fantastic book party and reading Oct. 20 at San Quentin State Prison. The work, whether fiction or poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir or dramatic lit, is stellar and the huge panel afterward, where the writers shared their creative process and the importance of art in their lives, was equally valuable and enlightening. That such beauty is possible behind bars is testament to the power of art to light darkness.

Malcolm was our manhood, our living, Black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man but a seed which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is. A prince. Our own Black shining prince who didn’t hesitate to die because he loved us so.

Paul Robeson was an extraordinary and versatile individual, world famous during his lifetime, who has been deliberately erased from the dominant myth of U.S. history for speaking the truth about conditions both domestic and abroad – his opposition to racism, fascism and colonialism and his support for civil and human rights, democracy, national liberation, socialism and the day-to-day resistance of working people of all lands to oppression, knowing that his fame would allow these messages to be more widely heard.