Book Recommendation: Female Assertiveness vs. Black Power

Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin Click the book title above to purchase book.  The names of the authors are links too and will lead you to their university or college webpages. Angela Davis Excerpt: Black Power Collides with Female Assertiveness As…

Milly Swan Price: Freedom, Kinship, and Property

Milly Swan Price (1824 – 1880) Her story reveals how free black women negotiated racial, gender, and familial relationships in the antebellum and post– Civil War South. On March 2, 1840, sixteen year-old Milly Swan— along with her three brothers (Nick, eighteen; Jim, seven; and Addison, about three) and four sisters (Peggy, twelve; Charity, about…

Books: From J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders to the Misappropriation of African American Popular Culture

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. – Haruki Murakami   Sometimes we need to branch out and read additional books that give us a better understanding of our history, present, and future.  To keep quoting the same individuals is to be closed-minded….

New Statesman | The Rotherham abuse scandal shows us that too much power still lies in the wrong hands

Originally posted on Sarah Ditum:
Here is the problem: the problem is power. Too much of it lies in the wrong hands, used to the wrong ends – male hands, used to serve male ends against female bodies. To challenge power you need to use power, which means women have to engage with powerful institutions…

Propaganda: The Media and Moral Panic that Strengthens Negative Stereotypes

“The public relations industry, which essentially runs the elections, is applying certain principles to undermine democracy which are the same as the principles that applies to undermine markets. The last thing that business wants is markets in the sense of economic theory. Take a course in economics, they tell you a market is based on…

The Giving Tree: Mothers

Many black women writers recount their mothers coming home after long hours of domestic labor and somehow, miraculously, finding the energy to prepare hot meals for their own families and braid their daughters’ hair. This labor-intensive work often resulted in neglect in their own homes. As adults they understood, but even as children, they remember…

Body parts from apples, the quest for the perfect battery: 15 talks from fresh thinkers at TED2016

Some people think outside the box. TED Fellows think outside the lines and corners, and also outside the medical establishment and the media landscape — even outside the solar system. Source: Body parts from apples, the quest for the perfect battery: 15 talks from fresh thinkers at TED2016

It’s Obama’s Constutitional Obligation: The Next Supreme Court Justice

Update on March 15, 2016: Obama Chooses Merrick Garland for Supreme Court.  In choosing Judge Garland, a former prosecutor who has served on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 1997 and as its chief judge since 2013, Mr. Obama opted to select a jurist better known for his meticulous work ethic…

Journal Article: Unarmed, But Still Dangerous????

Update on September 20, 2016: #Charles Kinsey, behavioral therapist was shot in the leg on July 18th with his hands up on the ground while yelling to the cops that he was unarmed and trying to calm down his client who ran into the street with a toy truck. They found in favor of the cops…

Lesson Plans and Tools on Africa / African American History for Parents and their Child(ren)

Lesson Plans for Parents and their child(ren) This is also a good resource for parents as well. Stop complaining about what the schools are not teaching your children. These ready-to-use lessons plans and activities will teach your children about African American History year-round. Please do not say the resources are not there for you and…

Destroying Stereotypes of the African American Mother

Roy and Burton (2007) indicated that some Black single mothers in their sample desired traditional, mainstream gender roles for their ideal families, despite the reality that their male partners were not meeting mainstream standards for masculinity. These studies provide only limited and indirect instruction about mothers’ goals and expectations for their sons and daughters. In…

Pigmentocracy: Color-Coded Racial Hierarchies

Update: Nina Simone’s documentary movie features Zoe Saldana in heavy, dark makeup to represent this icon.  A lot of people have voiced their outrage and I can understand why.  The pictures of Zoe as Nina does not do Nina Simone justice and she should be represented by an actress that doesn’t need to color-change, widen…