In the NEWS
'Negritude' Encore!
Revisiting a black art movement.
Village Voice
By Martha Schwendener
"Negritude" is a hip-sounding neologism invented by French-speaking writers 
in Paris in the 1930s. The idea was to create a pan-African identity, resistant to colonialism and informed by sources like surrealism, post-revolutionary Haiti, and Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Dubois.
Why African-American Art is so Hot
Forbes
By Susan Adams
Work by these artists is controversial and sizzling. Robert Johnson explains why.
Hanging in Robert Johnson's den is an oil from the 1930s by an African-American artist named Palmer Hayden. The painting depicts a black American businessman getting his shoes shined.
Profile: Derek Walcott: A smear silences the colonial bard
Beatings and abuse made Barack Obama's grandfather loathe the Britishd
Barack Obama's true colours: The making of the man who would be US president
featured ORGANIZATION
The Rachel Elizabeth Barton (REB) Foundation.jpg){kind=small}
The REB Foundation provides services and funding for classical music education, research, performances, and artists, to benefit listeners and learners alike. Current projects include an instrument loan program, grants for education and career, and creation of a supplemental curriculum of music for strings by composers of African descent.
The Foundation is also undertaking to research, commission, and compile music and collect related information for The String Student's Library of Music by Black Composers. This supplemental curriculum will acquaint students of all races and various stages of development with the rich heritage of classical string music by composers of African descent.
OBAC-WW 
The OBAC Story - Part 1
S. Brandi Barnes
Director
One of the purposes of the Black Arts Movement was to address and combat the prejudice and negative stereotypes of minorities. The movement and its purposes would impact a nation embroiled in Civil Rights and for federal, state, and local governments it was plain civil disorder.
Center for Black Music Research
An Artist’s Grant That Even Pays for Glasses
in their OWN WORDS
Black Founding Fathers: An Interview with Richard S. Newman
By David Liebers
June 30, 2008
The History News Network
Richard S. Newman is Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology. His most recent book, Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (NYU Press), is a long overdue biography of Richard Allen, a prodigious figure in the formation of the black Church. He was interviewed by email.
Professor and Preacher Michael Eric Dyson on Hip Hop & Politics, Don Imus, the "N"-word, and Bill Cosby
June 30, 2008
A conversation with Derek Walcott
Wole Soyinka on how he came to write Death and the King's Horseman
on BOOKS
It's not a black and white issue
Andrew Anthony
Sunday June 29, 2008
The Observer
Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate
by Kenan Malik
The two sides in the race debate have more in common than you'd think, says this vigorous study
A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
George Lewis
University of Chicago Press, 2007
Reviewed by Jim Johnson
Criticizing Cosby
'Never Been a Time' by Harper Barnes
Slaves, traders and pioneers: new book on the most turbulent period of Liverpool’s history
featured WEBSITES
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
It has information on over 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
National Museum of African Art
hit & RUN
Return to Africa
Fellow men of the Negro Race, Greeting
By Marcus Garvey
Negro World, Vol. XII, No. 10
April 22, 1922
For four and a half years the Universal Negro Improvement Association has been advocating the cause of Africa for the Africans -- that is, that the Negro peoples of the world should concentrate upon the object of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa.
featured ARTIST
Greg Pitts – The Black Jackson Pollock
Greg Pitts has been described as "The Black Jackson Pollock." His artwork has been compared to that of abstract impressionist artist Jackson Pollock. He was featured artist of the month for February 2009 with Elements of Art. He has been exhibited at Etra Fine Art Gallery and at Ornare in Miami, FL.
Penumbra Theatre founder defines American black stage
rave REVIEWS
Art Review | Jacob Lawrence
Visions of a People in Motion
By HOLLAND COTTER
December 28, 2007
Jacob Lawrence painted “The Migration of the Negro,” 60 small pictures in tempera on hardboard panels, in what seems like a flash.
African Americans’ Struggles, Triumphs Shown in Photo Exhibition
USINFO Staff Writer
By Lauren Monsen
27 November 2007
An exhibition of 100 striking black-and-white photographs evokes the personal stories and hard-won victories of influential African Americans who helped shape the life of their nation over the past 150 years.
history & CULTURE
Where Whites Draw the Line
By MARCUS MABRY
Published: June 8, 2008
How black is too black?
Millions of African-Americans celebrated Barack Obama’s historic victory, seeing in it a reflection — sudden and shocking — of their own expanded horizons. But whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.”
Will 'Bro Mitzvah' find roots in African American community?
By Jane Ulman, Contributing Editor
JewishJournal.com
March 13, 2008
Decked out in a black tuxedo, a brimmed hat set fashionably on his head, Douglas LeVandia Ulmer Jr., better known as DJ, walked down the aisle to the beat of two African drummers.
The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism
Presidential Politics 2008 - Obama
The dramas of blacks and Jews
poetry CORNER
Poet's Muse: A Footnote to Beethoven
The Poet Rita Dova
By Felicia R. Lee
The New York Times
Rita Dove, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former United States poet laureate, has now breathed life into the story of that virtuoso, George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, in her new book, “Sonata Mulattica” (W. W. Norton).
Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Eloquence of Rioters
By Raphaël Costambeys-Kempczynski
The Popmatters
This poetry, symbolically violent in its choice of literary form and symbolically subversive in its choice of Creole, reveals the literacy of rioters.
NEW DVD COLLECTION ON POET PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR FEATURES RECITALS BY NATION’S TOP BLACK POETS
ebony CLASSICAL
Sound of Woodwinds, Calling for Change
By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
November 14, 2008
The New York Times
In “Afro,” the jaunty first movement of the sultry Concerto for Wind Quintet by Valerie Coleman, the music evokes Afro-Cuban song and percussion with wailing melodies that dance over ostinato patterns for horn and bassoon.
By Tom Keogh
May 19, 2009
The Seattle Times
Marian Anderson String Quartet took the legendary singer's name, with her blessing.
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