The 16-Year-Old Who Could Take It All
PHOTOSAftermath Of Oklahoma Twister
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/doj-protest-taser_n_3312879.html?utm_hp_ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices
- Comments (601)
- | Financial Crisis
I am proud to be part of organizations like the Connecticut Sun and the WNBA that put such emphasis on giving back to the communities and people that support them.
featured posts
1 of 2
zhJ4dtkJeakhG9BOJnSImHJfJa0vGDDkyLB81pTZPQ4RY4K0iZ7tKP2hAaL1kUWFTjS1RBCjjgEKePs8wDljghQvTY8CEidQjW%2BmWQ%2B74YicHFDpIErF3Q%3D%3D
Unlike many rappers in hip-hop who are obvious industry pinheads just trying to cash into the bank, Kanye West knows more. Yet, that is perhaps the very problem: he knows more and yet does nothing to actually fix the problem.
I get that "Revolution" isn't trying to be groundbreaking drama, but it's been most compelling when it was unpredictable. This is an interesting premise that's been established. Keep us on our toes, and we'll be more invested.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) just released the latest data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) on Americans' sugar consumption, and the results are quite surprising. Here are some of the findings that really grabbed my attention.
Growing up in Tulsa, my dream was to play in the NBA. I am fortunate to have been able to achieve my dream, and now helping other kids follow their dreams has proven to be just as impactful on my life as every minute that I played in the NBA.
President Obama impeccably and eloquently made the connection between the role Morehouse has played in shaping today's world and the role it will play in shaping the future.
Truth be told, slurs are common around the water cooler, reflecting a dehumanizing view of criminal defendants that comes from years of locking them up, one person of color at a time.
After my sister died from breast cancer three years ago, I asked, during my mammogram, whether I should get tested for the breast cancer gene. I was warned that doing so, particularly if I tested positive for the gene, could mark me as an individual with a so-called pre-existing condition.
I'm honored Andrea Morehead could share some advice for other busy moms and her thoughts on early education.
Barack Obama visited Morehouse College on Sunday to give a refrain on the responsibility of Morehouse Men and black America to find dignity and progress in self-reliance, a refrain that has simultaneously proven exciting and excruciating for African Americans over the last four years.
I'd believed that I was headed for greatness, but they had revealed in me a thing that was seemingly so dirty, so disgusting that my other talents paled in comparison to the supposed vileness of being a practicing homosexual. And for this they bullied me right out of the church.
I was a 25-year-old documentary filmmaker from New York working on a show for MTV. He was a 21-year-old dancer in East Oakland trying to move on with his life after the murder of his little brother. I spent a year embedded in his life, and got a front row seat to an American epidemic.
Something is clearly wrong with our state when all the death sentences are coming out of one county. We are in a crisis when our state, which is 4.3 percent African-American, has a death row that is 100 percent African American. A broken system has produced flawed results.
I ask you, fans across America and around the world, to root for Memphis -- both the Grizzlies team and the city. Maybe a Grizzlies championship can provide just the "grits" this Southern city needs.
there's the almost ritual expectation by the public that second term presidents will be dogged by some scandal. This was the case with Eisenhower, Nixon, of course, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. This shouldn't surprise.
The loneliness of that realization, that my daughter might have to shoulder the consequences of these stigmas, made me heartsick. I'd made myself believe she would only be challenged by her race and gender, not the basic ability to speak her mind.
On this 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Children's Crusade it is a time to remember, honor, and follow the example of the children who were frontline soldiers and transforming catalysts in America's greatest moral movement of the 20th century.
There is no way to make up for decades of discrimination that crippled the proud history of black farm ownership in this country. But we can do our best to move forward.
The first step to overcoming an addiction is admitting that you have one. In order to rid oneself of addiction, one must declare it. My name is Fire Burgess and I am a diehard fan of misogynistic Rap music.
don't miss huffpost bloggers
1 of 5
zJ3FHk%2BnYbw%2B8QJ4lRAiiw%3D%3D
Vqa7GgSIoKTMuCDJ6XUCgg%3D%3D
HEsg60bDWHyfBeQ9B5mQHw%3D%3D
SizdAhJKYq3JKMtchcSZFg%3D%3D
3iqvZ6Kqo60G3LP8Pd9iLA%3D%3D
recent blog posts
1 of 1
Barack Obama's Morehouse Moment
Jarrett L. Carter, 2013.19.05
Most Popular
Who Holds the Other End?
When I was a little girl, we sometimes found ourselves one person short when we tried to jump rope. One of us had to swing the end of the rope and the other was meant to jump -- but who was to swing the other end? Sometimes we'd make do by tying the rope onto a fence. Black feminists are like that fence -- nothing would happen without the fence, but who ever talks about it? You don't share photos of a fence or invite it to reunions.
Finally arrives 'Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton' by Duchess Harris, and I realized what a tribute this book is to motherhood. It lionizes all the mothers -- literal or not -- in black activism (from Fannie Lou Hamer to Barbara Jordan, pictured below, to Dr. Joycelyn Elders). They were like that fence, holding up the other end of the jump rope and making everything possible.
They nurtured our movement, strategized our political growth and were guardians of our future. They are also too easily overlooked by the male dominated political movements and those who report on it. No matter how far black women march, no matter how big their afros, no matter how high the office they reach their history has always been told from the perspective of men, where the other end of the jump rope isn't that important.
As I read the Harris book, I'm reminded of my stepmother, Henrietta Walker. She was, in my mind, always grouped with those political women even though she was simply a cook in a slightly sketchy lounge in Boston's South End. She raised the children of other relatives, and me when I visited every weekend. She was so different from the quiet Native American/Bostonian great grandmother with whom I lived, that I was intrigued from the day we met when I was 8 years old.
Henrietta was from Gulfport, Mississippi and carried the art and culture of the south in her walk, and in her smoky voice, full frame and the red lipstick she wore. Both playful and commanding, she was as much a friend as caretaker. She believed in the Civil Rights Movement and was one of the few relatives who didn't have a fit when I started wearing my hair natural. She even wore an afro herself when she hit her 70s.
One story she told forever bound me to her and to the images of those black feminists who marched and sang and passed legislation. Henrietta went back to Mississippi for a family visit after the civil rights bill was passed and after the sit-ins and bus boycotts had died down. For the first time in her life she rode in the front of a municipal bus.
I'd watched all the southern marches and violence against the marchers on television and revered the people -- the men and the women -- who put their lives in danger to secure basic human rights like voting, schooling or drinking at a water fountain. They inspired me to be active in the more subtly segregated north.
Henrietta's bus ride echoed those heroic moments I'd watched anxiously on the nightly news and her description of that moment raised the hairs on my arms. This woman who'd taught me how to make peach cobbler, braid hair and wait on tables could have, despite the proclaimed new day, been in danger! All it took was one resentful racist sitting nearby.
She knew it and still she rode the bus. My usually cool teenage exterior dissolved and I cried as she expressed her own anxiety at sitting down in that strange place, that free place. She also revealed the mix of emotions she held inside when nothing happened -- exaltation, sadness and relief.
The world that has desecrated the image and idea of African American women from the moment the first slave was dragged in chains onto these shores has little space for these heroic women. The shameful lineage is long: from the mammy figure to the dismissive Moynihan Report that blamed black matriarchs for the demise of the black community, to the expletive filled defilement of black women that still fills rap and hip Hop music.
Yet it is millions of black mothers who shaded the children they gave birth to in cotton and tobacco fields and marched thru the civil rights movement; who still work night shifts to support families, and cry at the funerals of her gangsta sons. They serve in Congress and serve food just like Henrietta.
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Southern sit-ins I think about Henrietta and her bus ride. She disproved all of the knee-jerk stepmother stereotypes with her black, Southern, no-nonsense, silky boisterousness that carried the history of who black mothers really are. They carried the other end of that jump rope that made all things possible.
Jewelle Gomez is the author of 'The Gilda Stories,' the only black, lesbian, feminist vampire novel that marries lyrical language to epic action over a span of 200 years. Additional works include two poetry collections, a book of personal essays, and a collection of short stories. Read Jewelle's blog on Red Room.
Finally arrives 'Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton' by Duchess Harris, and I realized what a tribute this book is to motherhood. It lionizes all the mothers -- literal or not -- in black activism (from Fannie Lou Hamer to Barbara Jordan, pictured below, to Dr. Joycelyn Elders). They were like that fence, holding up the other end of the jump rope and making everything possible.
They nurtured our movement, strategized our political growth and were guardians of our future. They are also too easily overlooked by the male dominated political movements and those who report on it. No matter how far black women march, no matter how big their afros, no matter how high the office they reach their history has always been told from the perspective of men, where the other end of the jump rope isn't that important.
As I read the Harris book, I'm reminded of my stepmother, Henrietta Walker. She was, in my mind, always grouped with those political women even though she was simply a cook in a slightly sketchy lounge in Boston's South End. She raised the children of other relatives, and me when I visited every weekend. She was so different from the quiet Native American/Bostonian great grandmother with whom I lived, that I was intrigued from the day we met when I was 8 years old.
Henrietta was from Gulfport, Mississippi and carried the art and culture of the south in her walk, and in her smoky voice, full frame and the red lipstick she wore. Both playful and commanding, she was as much a friend as caretaker. She believed in the Civil Rights Movement and was one of the few relatives who didn't have a fit when I started wearing my hair natural. She even wore an afro herself when she hit her 70s.
One story she told forever bound me to her and to the images of those black feminists who marched and sang and passed legislation. Henrietta went back to Mississippi for a family visit after the civil rights bill was passed and after the sit-ins and bus boycotts had died down. For the first time in her life she rode in the front of a municipal bus.
I'd watched all the southern marches and violence against the marchers on television and revered the people -- the men and the women -- who put their lives in danger to secure basic human rights like voting, schooling or drinking at a water fountain. They inspired me to be active in the more subtly segregated north.
Henrietta's bus ride echoed those heroic moments I'd watched anxiously on the nightly news and her description of that moment raised the hairs on my arms. This woman who'd taught me how to make peach cobbler, braid hair and wait on tables could have, despite the proclaimed new day, been in danger! All it took was one resentful racist sitting nearby.
She knew it and still she rode the bus. My usually cool teenage exterior dissolved and I cried as she expressed her own anxiety at sitting down in that strange place, that free place. She also revealed the mix of emotions she held inside when nothing happened -- exaltation, sadness and relief.
The world that has desecrated the image and idea of African American women from the moment the first slave was dragged in chains onto these shores has little space for these heroic women. The shameful lineage is long: from the mammy figure to the dismissive Moynihan Report that blamed black matriarchs for the demise of the black community, to the expletive filled defilement of black women that still fills rap and hip Hop music.
Yet it is millions of black mothers who shaded the children they gave birth to in cotton and tobacco fields and marched thru the civil rights movement; who still work night shifts to support families, and cry at the funerals of her gangsta sons. They serve in Congress and serve food just like Henrietta.
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Southern sit-ins I think about Henrietta and her bus ride. She disproved all of the knee-jerk stepmother stereotypes with her black, Southern, no-nonsense, silky boisterousness that carried the history of who black mothers really are. They carried the other end of that jump rope that made all things possible.
Jewelle Gomez is the author of 'The Gilda Stories,' the only black, lesbian, feminist vampire novel that marries lyrical language to epic action over a span of 200 years. Additional works include two poetry collections, a book of personal essays, and a collection of short stories. Read Jewelle's blog on Red Room.
Follow Us
Daily Drama
Get Closer to BV
MEN OF MCCAFÉ SEARCH
McDonald's continues its nationwide search to find five community-service minded black men during this year's CIAA tournament.
Find a Message Board
Discover conversations on everyone from Barack to Beyonce. There are nearly 50 forums, so click on a category below and find the right one for you.
Comments: (3)
Add a comment
By: Airet on 5/09/2011 12:06AM
Black women’s faith leads to feminism and demands God's justice for all. Our ties are to the Bible/God and it is not separate from our stand for civil rights. Sojourner Truth is a good example of this, a preacher of the Gospel; she was invited by the "feminist" movement because of the truth she spoke of God's equality. She preached "Ain’t I a Woman". Black women believe God holds the other end.
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: Delilah on 5/12/2011 10:58PM
Hi, we loved to dump rope sometime, we would have to use, a fence post. Yes tie one end and turn with the other. Lord, knows we made good fun, in those years. Outside, riding bikes, roller scakting. And don't leave out Jaxs, those were wonderful, days, and nights.
Reply to this Comment | Report This
By: Pretty Almond Eyes on 5/13/2011 4:53PM
This is a beautiful tribute to the spirit of Black motherhood. It is very well written.
Reply to this Comment | Report This