The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

What up World!!! Today I will like to share with you a paragraph out of James Weldon Johnson famous novel “The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man”. While on a train he encounters a racist Texan who believes The Anglo-Saxon race has always been the masters of the world. Read how this Texan gets put in his place by a white northerner.

“Can you name a single one of the great fundamental and original intellectual achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon? The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of paintings, of the drama, of architecture; the science of mathematics, of astronomy, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of the metals, and the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations. We have carried many of these to their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others. Do you know the only original contribution to civilization we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly? And there we worked largely on principles which we did not discover. Why, we didn’t even originate the religion we use. We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races, and enjoy our position with a little less show of arrogance. We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it. After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history. The man here who belongs to what is, all in all, the greatest race the world ever produced, is almost ashamed to own it. If the Anglo-Saxon is the source of everything good and great in the human race from the beginning, why wasn’t the German forest the birthplace of civilization, rather than the valley of the Nile?” [1]

References

[1] Gates Jr. Henry L., and Nelie Y Mckay. eds. "African American Literature" 2nd ed. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2004.



The Souls of Black Folk



What up World!!!! Today I want to share with you a couple of paragraphs out of W.E.B Du Bois famous novel” The Souls of Black Folk”, describing what the function of college should be for us African American males.

 “The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and co-operation. And finally, beyond all this, it must develop men. Above our modern socialism, and out the worship of the mass, must persist and evolve that higher individualism which the centres of culture protect; there must come a loftier respect for the sovereign human soul that seek s to know itself and the world about it; that seeks a freedom for expansion and self-development; that will love and hate and labor in its own way, untrammeled alike by old and new. Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhine-gold, they shall again.
Herein the longing of black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view and make their loving, living, and doing precious to all human hearts. And to themselves in these the days that try their souls, the chance to soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black. I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension.  So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America?  Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideous of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the promised land?” [1]

References

[1] Gates Jr. Henry L., and Nelie Y Mckay. eds. "African American Literature" 2nd ed. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2004.





Book of the Month

What up World!!!! Today I want to share with you a book I believe is inspiring. This book is the tale of how our African brothers and sisters resilience and determination to stand for a cause could not be broken. In a time we live in now where us as African Americans are facing some of the most disastrous situations, let this book inspire you and let you know that if we come together we cannot be stopped. Sembene Ousmane wrote a masterpiece that should be passed on from generation to generation.

  

 Sembene Ousmane

Black Art

Amiri Baraka

What up World!!!!! Today I have an interesting poem I want to share with you by Amiri Baraka, titled "Black Art". I hope you enjoy

 

Black Art

                            By Amiri Baraka

Poems are bullshit unless they are

teeth or trees or lemons piled

on a step. Or black ladies dying

of men leaving nickel hearts

beating them down. Fuck poems

and they are useful, wd they shoot

come at you, love what you are,

breathe like wrestlers, or shudder

strangely after pissing. We want live

words of the hip world live flesh &

coursing blood. Hearts Brains

Souls splintering fire. We want poems

like fists beating niggers out of Jocks

or dagger poems in the slimy bellies

of the owner-jews. Black poems to

smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches

whose brains are red jelly stuck

between 'lizabeth taylor's toes. Stinking

Whores! we want "poems that kill."

Assassin poems, Poems that shoot

guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys

and take their weapons leaving them dead

with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff

poems for dope selling wops or slick halfwhite

politicians Airplane poems, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .tuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuh

. . .rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . Setting fire and death to

whities ass. Look at the Liberal

Spokesman for the jews clutch his throat

& puke himself into eternity . . . rrrrrrrr

There's a negroleader pinned to

a bar stool in Sardi's eyeballs melting

in hot flame Another negroleader

on the steps of the white house one

kneeling between the sheriff's thighs

negotiating coolly for his people.

Aggh . . . stumbles across the room . . .

Put it on him, poem. Strip him naked

to the world! Another bad poem cracking

steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth

Poem scream poison gas on beasts in green berets

Clean out the world for virtue and love,

Let there be no love poems written

until love can exist freely and

cleanly. Let Black people understand

that they are the lovers and the sons

of warriors and sons

of warriors Are poems & poets &

all the loveliness here in the world

We want a black poem. And a 

Black World.

Let the world be a Black Poem

And Let All Black People Speak This Poem

Silently

or LOUD

Source: Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1979)

Olaudah Equiano

                            Olaudah Equiano (1745 - 31 March 1797)

What up World!!!! Today I want to talk about an African American man who is widely regarded as the creator of the prototype slave narrative. “Equiano was not the first African-born former slave to recount his experience in bondage and freedom. But he was the first to write the story of his life himself, without the aid or direction of white ghostwriters or editors, such as predecessors in the slave narrative relied on. Equiano’s independence in this regard may be one reason why his story places much more emphasis on the atrocities of slavery and pleads more insistently for its total and immediate abolition than any previous slave narrative. Most slave narrators of Equiano’s era impressed their white sponsors with their piety and their willingness to forgive those who had once oppressed and exploited them. Although Equiano made much of his conversion to Christianity, he made clear his dedication to social change by venting his moral outrage toward slavery and by structuring his story so that freedom, not the consolations of religion, emerges as the top priority of his life in slavery.”[1]

 

References

[1] Gates Jr. Henry L., and Nelie Y Mckay. eds. "African American Literature" 2nd ed. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2004.

                                                                            

Jean Michel Basquiat

Jean Michel Basquiat ( December 22 1960 - August 12, 1988)

What up world!!!!  I know, I know, I’ve been gone for a while, but now I’m back. Today I want to inform you about a great African American artist who was never appreciated until his death. The record price for a Basquiat painting was made on May 15, 2007, when an untitled Basquiat work from 1981 sold at Sotheby's in New York for US$14.6 million. His artwork truly represented his heritage at a time when nobody wanted to accept a black artist. Take a look at a few of his masterpieces.

Fallen Angel 1981

Desmond

Unquiet Mind





Afro-American Fragment

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

What up world!! Today I have a great poem to share with you by Langston Hughes titled, “Afro- American Fragment.”

Afro-American Fragment

So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Not even memories alive
Save those that history books create,
Save those that songs
Beat back into the blood-
Beat out of blood with words sad-sung
In strange un-Negro tongue -
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.

Subdued and time-lost
Are the  drums – and yet
Through some vast mist of race
There comes this song
I do not understand
This song of atavistic land,
Of bitter yearning lost
Without a place -
So long,
So far away
Is Africa’s
Dark face.
Langston Hughes