One thing for sure can be said of what 9/11 has meant; when this country recoils into itself, when it is hit – be that hit real or perceived – and it rallies itself around itself things get worse for damn near everybody else. Flags wave, planes fly and more Black people lose their jobs…
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Elombe Brath (1936-2014), whose writings from two decades have been collected here in a fundraising vehicle for the memorial foundation bearing his name, was the heir of Harlem’s street orators—those men who gathered at streetcorners before and after World War II and talked about the Africa inside. Armed with a century of books, pamphlets and documents, these people educated African villages across America about the relationship between history, culture, politics and society from the perspectives of the most powerful people who had ever been colonized.
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What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America.Michael Eric Dyson.St. Martin’s Press, 294 pp. $24.99. Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs This review admittedly asks an unfair question: If Michael Eric Dyson had written the 1961 film version of “A Raisin in the Sun” instead of the play’s creator,…
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