Thomas Jefferson’s record documenting the 600 African people he enslaved. (via Slave images unearthed from the ‘Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello” exhibit at the Smithsonian - The Washington Post)
“…We listen out of a borrowed nostalgia for an unremembered, pre-internet age.”
Toni Scott’s  “Slave Ship and Body Casts”   Photographer Gene Ogami  If you live in Los Angeles, you must see it in person. The exhibit is open at the California African American Museum until the end of February (I think).   If you can’t get to the museum in time, here’s the rest of the exhibit. (via California African American Museum - Current Exhibits - Gallery of Discovery)
PortalBEP: What do you think about this change of the Black Eyed Peas from hip hop to electronic, does that make any sense to you? I’ll be very honest to you: I doesn’t make sense to me. I gonna say this for the first time in a interview: The Black Eyed Peas, to me, it’s like going to a restaurant, if I ordered fish and someone bring me a pork shark, I’m gonna do: “Hold on a second, I’ve ordered fish”. To make the analogy makes sense, I was in the black eyed peas and I feel like what they are now, is another product like now they’re potatoes. I’m not trying to make fun of them, but they’re not the BEP anymore to me, it’s the same name, but it’s a completely different product. So if I saw who they are now, without knowing the back history where they came from, it would be a little easy for me to accept. I don’t know if I would like anymore, but I would cringe when I hear it, but I’m not crazy about that style of music, it’s not about the BEP. But I do feel, that the Black Eyed Peas have accomplished something really unique, they’ve been able to go from underground hip hop to this kind of electronic dance music, and still sell a lot of records and they pleased a lot of different people, that’s what’s beautiful about it.(via PortalBlackEyedPeas.com | The BEST Black Eyed Peas Fan-site)
restlessandcr8ive: Cheikh Anta Diop historian, anthropologist, physicist,and politician who studied the human race’s origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his controversial theory that the Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans. Cheikh Anta Diop University, in Dakar, Senegal is named after him.
Kinda Sorta Response to Ntozake Shange I self-identify as a feminist & a womanist.   I understand the need to be united under one identity. I also understand the need to target a uniquely equipped group of folk who can analyze matrices of identities  & social locations such as race, ethnicity, nationalist, class, sex assignment, gender  and sexual orientation.  I really don’t think we need to choose between labels. In the end, it’s about the work we accomplish. 

Kinda Sorta Response to Ntozake Shange

I self-identify as a feminist & a womanist.   I understand the need to be united under one identity. I also understand the need to target a uniquely equipped group of folk who can analyze matrices of identities  & social locations such as race, ethnicity, nationalist, class, sex assignment, gender  and sexual orientation.  I really don’t think we need to choose between labels. In the end, it’s about the work we accomplish. 

Photographer Tim Mosenfelder of Getty Images captures Etta James in 2007 at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival. (via Etta James, 2007 | A Photo History of Etta James, Dead At 73 | Entertainment | TIME.com)
Visual artist Betye Saar and creator of her most famous “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” is 85 and looking fabulous!  
(via Rare Photos of Martin Luther King Jr. at Home - Photo Essays - TIME)
Sonia Sanchez is Philly’s Poet Laureate.  (via Sonia Sanchez becomes Philly’s first poet laureate - phillyBurbs.com : Book Checked)
Emmet Wigglesworth -The Prophet Came to Give Them Truth (via Borough painter creates artistic works designed for straphanger consumption • TimesLedger)
“When the specific gravity of certain poems becomes too much to bear, I start spreading poems them out on the floor. I walk among them, I talk to them: “Where do you want to be? Why are you sitting out there all alone — too good to fraternize, or are you shy, do you need someone to hold your hand?” I sing to them, listen for answers.” (via a tweet from @blackstudies; Direct Link in the Source)
dallastar: LOOL!
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