Prison as a fact of life

There is a moment is August Wilson's play, The Piano Lesson, when several of the male characters spontaneously start singing, "Berta Berta", a familiar folk song. Had it been another  group of men from another place and time, it might have been a school song, a fraternity song, a camp song. But for  these African American men who came of age in the pre-civil rights south, it was a prison song that bound them together, because this was one experience few black men could avoid.

I thought about that when I started reading Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmons's gripping, horrifying explanation of how thousands of African American men were re-enslaved through the prison labor system in the decades after the Civil War. It was no ...coincidence that so many black men found themselves deprived of the very rights they, and so many others had fought so bloodily to achieve.

When we read The New Jim Crow back in  October 2012, we considered how the prison system could be manipulated to rob black men of their vote. Blackmon suggests it robbed them of far more than that.

Join us Tuesday February 18th at 7:00 for our discussion. Call 847-448-8620 to reserve a copy.

We'll be reading and discussing The Piano Lesson on June 16th with legendary director Ron O.J. Parson as part of our 11 Months of African American History. Don't miss it!

11 Months of African American History

February will be here in a few weeks, and events celebrating African American History Month will become ubiquitous. As mentioned before, on this blog, squeezing an entire culture into one month of events seems arbitrary and limiting, so this year, Evanston Public Library is taking a different, and somewhat radical approach.

You will not see a February Black History display. We will not have a list of African American History Month events. Instead, in March we are launching a series we're calling "11 Months of African American History". Rather than attempt to fit all of our  rich African American cultural offerings into 28 short days, we are committed to offering at least one African American themed event every month between March 2014 and January 2015.

Discovering Black Paris

Next Tuesday, we'll be discussing Passing Love, the story of an African American woman who discovers that her mother was part of the postwar generation of African Americans who sought equality and dignity in Paris when it was denied them at home. The story is fiction, but based on a very real cultural phenomenon, one that has been getting renewed attention recently. (Get in the mood with this bluesy evocative piece by Mighty Mo Rodgers, "Black Paris Blues".)

African Americans have been fleeing to Paris since the early 19th century, but it was after both the first and second world wars that black soldiers, (like Squire in the novel) who had been stationed in France, discovered  that French attitudes towards race were far more accepting, and that their home country was by contrast becoming even more intolerant. As Tyler Stovall, a history professor at the University of California Berkeley, examined in his exploration of Black American life in Paris, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light, many Southern Whites “feared that glimpses of racial tolerance in France had spoiled Black soldiers” and would refuse to go back to the ways of subjugation".

Many of the greatest African American writers, artists, musicians and thinkers made their home in Paris in the early 20th century: Jack Johnson, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Sidney Bechet, Nina Simone, and most famously Josephine Baker. This cultural heritage is now the subject of college courses, blogs, and specialty travel sites such as Walking the Spirit, Entree to Black Paris, and Black Paris Tours, profiled here on  NPR: "Paris Has Been a Haven for African Americans Escaping Racism".
For more on African American life in Paris, past and present see:

"Blacks in Paris",  Ebony, July 19 2012. Highlights the musical influence of Paris on African Americans, from Josephine Baker through Jay-z and Kanye West.
Entree to Black Paris blog, link to article on African American  soldiers

Spirit of Black Paris blog, "My Top 30 Books on Black Paris and Beyond"

See you next Tuesday! 

Ujamaa: Buying Black for Kwanzaa

Upadate: Listen to Maggie Anderson's  interview with Tony Sarabia and Richard Steele  this  morning on WBEZ!

My head is reeling after finishing Our Black Year. I found myself profoundly moved by Maggie's struggles and sacrifices, but also profoundly irritated. Why was a socially conscious woman with a 6 figure income shopping at Wal-Mart? Why was she so judgmental towards lower income African Americans, and so quick to generalize about "other" ethnic groups?

I also pondered the underlying premise of the experiment. Which is better: patronizing black entrepreneurs who do not live in distressed black communities, or supporting non black owned companies based in the neighborhoods? Should the focus be on black ownership or black employment?

We'll sort through these and other thorny questions at our discussion next Tuesday December 17th at 7:00 pm. If you're interested, but haven't had a chance to read the book, no worries: check out The Empowerment Experiment website, for summaries, statistics, and some great video of Maggie Anderson and family explaining the project.  And remember: Kwanzaa is coming soon! What a great time to consider the 4th principle, Ujamaa: Cooperative Economics.

And BTW...like AAL on Facebook! You'll find many ore tidbits about African American media, issues, and book selections, including Maggie Anderson's tips on Buying Black for the holidays.

"What Does the Black Consumer Receive in Exchange For 1 Trillion Dollars?"

Points to ponder as we get ready for our December 17th discussion, Our Black Year. How much "Black Friday" shopping goes to the Black community?

One Family's Great Migration...

We'll be discussing Ayanna Mathis’ Twelve Tribes of Hattie on Tuesday November 19^th, the story of Hattie Shepherd, who comes north with her family in the early 1920s, and raises her 12 children in Philadelphia. Each chapter focuses on a different member of Hattie’s family: the children , but also her sisters, granddaughter, husband, and Hattie herself. Through Hattie’s story we see the effect of one family’s great migration across eight decades.

Here’s a teaser: Hattie’s first afternoon outside the South…

“A Negro woman approached the cart…The white man stood -- he did not hesitate, his body didn’t contort into a posture of menace. As the woman with the flowers took her change…she upset three of the flower arrangements….Hattie stiffened, waiting for the inevitable explosion. She waited for the other Negroes to step back and away from the object of the violence that was surely coming. She waited for the moment in which she would have to shield her eyes from the woman and whatever horror would ensue. The vendor stooped to pick up the mess. The Negro woman gestured apologetically…In a couple of minutes all was settled…

Hattie looked more closely at the crowd on the sidewalk. The Negroes did not step into the gutters to let whites pass…Four Negro girls walked by, teenagers like Hattie, chatting to one another. Just girls in conversation, gigging and easy the way only white girls walked and talked in the city streets of Georgia…”Mama”, Hattie said, “I’ll never go back. Never”.

See you on November 19^th!

What's in a Word?

This Tuesday we'll be meeting to discuss Jabari Asim's provocative , The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't and Why. More than a simple history of a word, Asim's book is a history of the development of American racist thought. In this video, Asim discusses his motivations for researching and writing about the history of "the word", and the incident that heightened his awareness of its perils.

Should "the word" be banned permanently, even from works of literature where it is historically appropriate? There's no universal agreement of course. In 2008, the board of the Wilmette Park District refused to stage a production of the play Ragtime in its outdoor theatre, because they feared unsuspecting passers-by would be exposed to "the word". This resulted in the highly unusual case of an African American, (director Ty Perry) defending use of "the word" to a white organization.

Perry explained his view in an interview, saying, "You take that word out of this story and you invalidate my history as an African-American male. Do I like the word? No. But to pretend nobody said it is wrong. I wouldn't even consider doing that. Context is everything, and it's not gratuitous, it's not for shock value.How can we learn about our present if we don't educate people about what happened in our past"

Join us in learning more about our past this coming Tuesday, 7:00 pm, Evanston Public Library.