Friday, July 6, 2012

14 African American Male writers can change a nation.

Remain selfless with your pens. Always embrace hope for the preservation of self, for the preservation of this nation. Become intellectual warriors.

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Negro National Anthem - James Weldon Johnson

Lift every voice and sing,

'Til earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chast'ning rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,

'Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,

May we forever stand,

True to our God,

True to our native land.

An Earlier Patriot - U.S. Marine

BRIDGEPORT -- Shortly after graduating from Central High School in 1943, 17-year-old Lavell Lynch heard African-Americans could join the U.S. Marine Corps. He figured he would try it out. "I was an adventurous type of young man," he recalled.

Lynch's parents didn't know their 5-foot-7-inch, 130-pound son had enlisted. "My father had a fit," Lynch said. His mother simply said, "Let him learn for himself."

On Tuesday, Lynch, now 85 years old, will receive a Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, D.C., for his service as one of the first African-American Marines in the country.

Black Unemployment Rate in Chicago

Black unemployment in Chicago is third highest in the nation, report finds

July 3, 2012

By: Niala Boodhoo

At 19 percent, African-American unemployment in Chicago ranks the third highest in the country, according to a report published this week by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.

Between 2010 and 2011, the jobless rate for Chicago's black workers increased 1.7 percent. In contrast, nearby Detroit had similar rates, closer to 18 percent, but with a 7 percent decrease in the black unemployment rate during the same time period.

The report's author, Algernon Austin, said he thinks the better numbers for Detroit's black workers reflects Michigan's economy.

"Recovery might be too strong of a word but we're seeing improved circumstances," Austin said. "It's likely due to the return of the auto industry, and that's reaching in and benefitting black workers."

In contrast, Austin says Chicago's segregation weighs heavily on local African-American jobless rates - especially compared to other metropolitan areas in the report.

IN THE NEWS

High Court Bars Mandatory Life Terms For Juveniles

ALI FRICK and NINA TOTENBERG

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June 25, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down state and federal laws that impose a mandatory sentence of life without parole on juveniles convicted of murder.

By a 5-4 vote, the court said that juveniles may still be sentenced to life without parole, but that to do so automatically, without allowing the judge or jury to consider the defendant's youth, whether he was the triggerman or an accomplice, and other factors, would violate the constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The court threw out the sentences given to two 14-year-old boys convicted of murder. One, Kuntrell Jackson, followed his friends into an Arkansas video store to rob it, and when his friend shot and killed the clerk, Jackson was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder and sentenced to life without parole. The other, Evan Miller, beat and killed a neighbor in Alabama after a night of drinking and drug use. Both boys were tried as adults, and then given the mandatory adult punishment of life without the possibility of parole.

'Children Are Different'

The court's decision built on two earlier decisions. In 2005, the court invalidated the death sentence for juveniles, and in 2010, it held that states could not impose life without parole sentences on juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes.

Brother Authors 'Quotes

Each day, the temptation to quit looked easier and easier. BA 7

Whatever my mother said looked good for God, was good enough for me. BA 10

The church pews are daunting things, like comfortable firing blocks. BA 10

He always considered the best medication to be relaxation, especially for someone with a plethora of social anxiety disorders. BA 10

Come back and death has open arms- BA 4

Unaided I am weak, but together there is no force that matches us – BA 9

We let the darkness consume her - BA 10

Someone tell me who I am – BA 14

And shows their true inner brother – BA 1

Broken souls lamenting on justice’s errors – BA 7

Living grim reapers roam the city – BA 4

We’re so defiant
Blind
We don’t know that we sparked war – BA 12

A stand must be taken, whether it’s for better or worse – Keelun

You can feel the ground vibrate but harden to the sound
of innocence
and cracks like the badlands.
An apology unheard from the bullets – BA 10

Now we waltz along sea-side street corners,
to ease the pain.
We will call it destitution.
Giving our lives meaning by tangoing with the
trigger.
Force fed by the idea that identity is found
through syringes and sex.
To keep the mortality rate low – BA 10

While we listen as Society tells us a bedtime story

About who we are and how we came to be

We are fed the expired box lunch of what media has served

But that can no longer be healthy for us – BA 1

Tired of seeing this rigged game of Monopoly.
193,000 Brothers need to see books instead of bars.
The youth is brainwashed – BA 9

Scared of the government because they have big guns.

I have a Big mind that I'm not scared to fire. - Zack

Schools should be looked at like cathedrals - Will

We must show the world our real beauty through our pain -

Black Writers

Awareness of being black is the most powerful and the most fertile single inspiration for black writers in America. It is ironic that blackness, for so long regarded as a handicap socially and culturally, should also be an artistic strength… All writers arrive at a reconciliation of a sense of tradition and a sense of difference. For nearly all black writers in America that sense of difference was the recognition of blackness. For nearly all, but not all. Being black was less important for Charles Chestnutt than it was for James Baldwin. But for most, blackness was the spur, the barb, or the shirt of pain that moved the artist to achieve distinction. (Davis and Walden, 1970, p. 13-14)