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Feb 27, 2018 ... Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Among her best known novels are 'The Bluest Eye,' 'Song of Solomon,' 'Beloved' and 'A Mercy.' ... Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning ...

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COINTELPRO (Portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956-1971) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.

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Fifty years ago this Thursday, the call for "black power" by Stokely Carmichael in Greenwood, Miss., transformed the black freedom struggle.

Frightening white citizens while transforming black identity, the black power movement's call for radical political self-determination challenged liberal frameworks for racial equality in profound ways that continue to reverberate to this day. Black power took us beyond civil rights protests and challenged the structural nature of race, class and gender inequality, and in the process galvanized domestic and international struggles for liberation.

Just as today's Black Lives Matter activists have recognized the criminal-justice system as a gateway to multifaceted systems of racial oppression, black power activists identified the Vietnam War, Jim Crow racism and poverty as panoramic threats against racial equality and economic justice.

Under Carmichael's leadership, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced "snick"), turned "black power" into a clarion call, a phrase that identified an already existing movement for black liberation that had been led by the indefatigable Malcolm X.

But Malcolm's ideas of black solidarity, the cultural politics of race, anti-colonialism and human rights flourished past his assassination.

Carmichael, a Trinidadian immigrant-turned-brash New Yorker activist, became the black power movement's most well-known and charismatic spokesperson, publicly repudiating racism, war and white supremacy while vowing to fight for freedom by any means necessary.

"It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community," Carmichael said. "It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."

The most famous group to heed Carmichael's call to action was the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Founded in Oakland, Calif., in October 1966, the Panthers derived their name from black sharecroppers in Lowndes County, Ala., but were inspired by Malcolm X. Maverick black nationalists, budding socialists and unconventional Marxists, the Panthers organized around ending police brutality, the tip of the spear in an expansive revolutionary program that called for "land, peace, bread and justice" for the black community.

Brandishing shotguns, pistols and bandoliers, with powder-blue T-shirts, leather jackets and black berets, the Panthers became the most enduring symbol of black power activism's bracing challenge against institutional racism. In an era before mass incarceration and Black Lives Matter, the Panthers regarded the criminal-justice system as a racist gulag designed to demonize and denigrate poor blacks. On this score, the group developed innovative and enduring anti-poverty programs that offered free breakfast for children, health clinics, ambulance services, tenant and legal aid, and prisoner-rights advocacy.

The "black consciousness" movement spurred by Carmichael's call for black power touched every sector of the African-American community. Black college and high school students responded to the movement by pushing for black-history and black-studies programs and changing the names of public schools to honor past activists. Poets, writers and artists embarked on a Black Arts Movement, led by Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka, that embraced a new, complex black identity, one closely tied to Africa. Angela Davis, George Jackson and the Attica prison rebellion helped expand the movement's political terrain by elevating black prisoners to the forefront of radical political organizing in the early 1970s.

A broad range of black artists, from Nina Simone to James Brown and Marvin Gaye, drew inspiration from a movement that challenged white supremacy from the inside out. For the black middle class, magazines like Essence (launched in 1970) provided new, expansive notions of black beauty that would culminate in a transformed media landscape by the 1970s. The search for black identity would reach its popular peak with the broadcast of the television series Roots, which was watched by over 100 million Americans in 1977.

But the black power rise was countered by multiple efforts to smash the movement. FBI, state and local authorities arrested, harassed, threatened and at times killed activists, dozens of whom remain in jail to this day. Carmichael himself was targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO, planting evidence that made him look like a CIA informant, causing Carmichael's expulsion from both the Black Panthers and SNCC. President Richard Nixon attempted, at times successfully, to redefine black power as black capitalism, a maneuver that co-opted radical energies into believing that black faces in higher places would lead to freedom.

By the 1980s, black power activists could point to Harold Washington's successful Chicago mayoral campaign, the Rev. Jesse Jackson's passionate 1984 presidential run and the global impact of the anti-apartheid movement as testaments to the movement's endurance, but its heyday had past.

But today, Black Lives Matter activism has served as a valediction of the movement. This passionate, disruptive activism against mass incarceration and police killings has spilled over onto college campuses in defiant displays of protest and civil disobedience that recall America's heady black power years, echoing a time when a 24-year-old black revolutionary walked along a Mississippi highway and made the earth stand still.
Peniel E. Joseph, a contributing editor at The Root, is professor and founding director, the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama and Stokely: A Life. Follow him on Twitter.

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50 Years Ago Stokely Carmichael Called for 'Black Power,' Galvanizing a Movement

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Fifty years ago this Thursday, the call for "black power" by Stokely Carmichael in Greenwood, Miss., transformed the black freedom struggle. Frightening white citizens while transforming black identity, the black power movement's call for radical political self-determination challenged liberal frameworks for racial equality in profound ways that continue to reverberate to this day.

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On Monday President Barack Obama, surrounded by members of his President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing -created in the wake of last year's grand jury decisions in the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner-announced policy recommendations to local law enforcement as a response to the outrage generated by a nationwide epidemic of police violence.

"We have a great opportunity," said Obama, "coming out of some great conflict and tragedy, to really transform how we think about community-law-enforcement relations so that everybody feels safer and our law-enforcement officers feel, rather than being embattled, feel fully supported.

"We need to seize that opportunity," he added.

The president's words came one day after the New York Times reported on a pattern of systemic prisoner abuse at the Attica Correctional Facility in western New York. The story offered readers a glimpse into a world where a predominantly African-American inmate population is routinely brutalized by the prison's mostly white staff of guards. One young black man, George Williams, received a beating in 2011 severe enough to break his legs and force the prison to send him to two different hospitals for treatment.

On Monday, the same day that Obama spoke of hope and promise for better understanding between law enforcement and the black community, the three guards charged with Williams' brutal assault resigned (with their full pensions) in a misdemeanor plea deal that avoided jail time.

There is an important connection between the task force report and Attica. Attica, which became a metaphor for state repression following a 1971 prison rebellion that left 39 men (29 prisoners and 10 hostages) dead, reveals the breadth and depth of corruption in a criminal-justice system that requires fundamental transformation and not just mere reform. Reports of abuse in Attica are far from isolated events, as recent exposés on brutality at New York City's Rikers Island prison attest.

We can no longer afford to ignore the fact that the pervasive culture of police brutality and the law-enforcement approach that produced the crisis in Ferguson, Mo., continues-at times even worsens-in our prison system. Those convicted of crimes, according to our system, have precious few rights that correctional facilities must respect, including the right to dignified and humane treatment.

The system of mass incarceration, which the legal scholar Michelle Alexander has dubbed The New Jim Crow, envelops virtually every aspect of American life, drawing fresh inmates from our public schools; brutalizing the mentally ill and indigent; and allowing the breaking of inmates' legs while offering substandard medical care and permitting the perpetrators to maintain their pensions, futures and the freedoms denied to those incarcerated.

Policymakers have implored the president to respond with sweeping changes that alter the way in which criminal-justice grants are distributed to local states via executive order. #BlackLivesMatter protests have galvanized moral outrage against the shooting and beating of black folks nationwide and internationally, inside and outside of prisons.

But Obama's words reminded me of how often we fail to connect the most important dots. Michael Brown's death in Ferguson is intimately linked with the violent assault against George Williams in Attica, just as Eric Garner's killing in Staten Island, N.Y., is connected to the abuse of mentally ill inmates on Rikers Island.

What all these instances share is the criminalization and dehumanization of black bodies at the hands of institutions that much of the general public still believe are designed to serve and protect society. These unconscionable abuses illustrate the need for both comprehensive policy to end the injustices and for a social movement ambitious enough to understand the deep connections between the police abuse of ordinary citizens and a prison guard's abuse of inmates. What both citizens and inmates have in common-whether courts, politicians or pundits refuse to see it-is a shared humanity that should be treated with equal dignity and respect for both the innocent and the guilty.
Peniel E. Joseph, a contributing editor at The Root, is professor and founding director, the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama and Stokely: A Life. Follow him on Twitter.

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We Can't Ignore the Link Between Ferguson and Those Attica Prison Guards' Brutality

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On Monday President Barack Obama, surrounded by members of his President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing-created in the wake of last year's grand jury decisions in the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner-announced policy recommendations to local law enforcement as a response to the outrage generated by a nationwide epidemic of police violence.

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Queen Nanny of the Maroons (? - 1733) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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Sources: Mavis Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796 (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, Volume II (T. Lowndes, Fleet Street, London 1774); Karla Gottlieb, The mother of us all: A history of Queen Nanny, leader of the Windward Jamaican Maroons (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2000).

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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Who Was Nat Turner?

Nat Turner (October 2, 1800 to November 11, 1831) was a slave who became a preacher and made history as the leader of one of the bloodiest slave revolts in America on August 21, 1831. Following the insurrection Turner hid for six weeks, but he was eventually caught and later hanged. The incident ended the emancipation movement in that region and led to even harsher laws against slaves. While Turner became an icon of the 1960s black power movement, others have criticized him for using violence as a means of demanding change.

Nat Turner Movie and Book

Turner was the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner.

Nat Turner's life and uprising was also the subject of the 2016 film, The Birth of a Nation, which was directed, written by and starring Nate Parker. The film won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Nat Turner's Rebellion

On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner and his supporters began a revolt against white slave owners with the killing of his owners, the Travis family.

Turner believed in signs and heard divine voices, and he had a vision in 1825 of a bloody conflict between black and white spirits. Three years later, he had what he believed to be another message from God. In his later confession, Turner explained "the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent." Turner would receive another sign to tell him when to fight, but this latest message meant "I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons."

Turner took a solar eclipse that occurred in February 1831 as a signal that the time to rise up had come. He recruited several other slaves to join him in his cause. Turner gathered more supporters-growing to a group of up to 40 or 50 slaves-as he and his men continued their violent spree through the county. They were able to secure arms and horses from those they killed. Most sources say that about 55 white men, women and children died during Turner's rebellion.

Initially, Turner had planned to reach the county seat of Jerusalem and take over the armory there, but he and his men were foiled in this plan. They faced off against a group of armed white men at a plantation near Jerusalem, and the conflict soon dissolved into chaos. Turner himself fled into the woods.

While Turner hid, white mobs took their revenge on the blacks of Southampton County. Estimates range from approximately 100 to 200 African Americans were slaughtered after the rebellion.

Nat Turner's Death

Turner was eventually captured on October 30, 1831. He was represented by lawyer Thomas R. Gray, who wrote down Turner's confession. Turner pled not guilty during his trial, believing that his rebellion was the work of God. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and this sentence was carried out on November 11, 1831. Many of his co-conspirators met the same fate.

The incident put fear in the heart of Southerners, ending the organized emancipation movement in that region. Southern states enacted even harsher laws against slaves instead. Turner's actions also added fuel to the abolitionist movement in the North. Noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison even published an editorial in his newspaper The Liberator in support of Turner to some degree.

When and Where Was Nat Turner Born?

Turner was born on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner.

Family and Early Life

Turner's mother was named Nancy, but nothing is known about his father. Nat Turner's slave owner Benjamin allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing and religion.

As a small child, Turner was thought to have some special talent because he could describe things that happened before he was even born. Some even remarked that he "surely would be a prophet," according to his later confession. His mother and grandmother told Turner that he "was intended for some great purpose." Turner was deeply religious and spent much of his time reading the Bible, praying and fasting.

Over the years, Turner worked on a number of different plantations. He ran away from Samuel Turner, his former owner's brother, in 1821. After 30 days hiding in the woods, Turner came back to Turner's plantation after he received what he believed to be a sign from God. After Samuel Turner's death, Nat Turner became the slave of Thomas Moore and then the property of his widow. When she married John Travis, Nat Turner went to work on Travis' lands.

Legacy

Over the years, Turner has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s black power movement as an example of an African American standing up against white oppression.

Others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end. As historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today to questions of how to organize for change."

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Nat Turner (October 2, 1800 to November 11, 1831) was a slave who became a preacher and made history as the leader of one of the bloodiest slave revolts in America on August 21, 1831. Following the insurrection Turner hid for six weeks, but he was eventually caught and later hanged.

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Matthew Kay first learned to tell stories as a child growing up in Germantown, by creating them with his mom.

"We'd see an old woman walking a dog and she'd be like, 'What's her story?' And I'd be like, 'Well, that's the dog's grandmother,' " Kay said.

Today, Kay, a 34-year-old English teacher at the Science Leadership Academy, a magnet high school in Center City, helps Philly teens learn to tell their own stories through Philly Slam League, a slam poetry league he founded eight years ago that draws an average of 300 students a week from 22 schools across the city.

"Normally I have a pretty bad stutter, but performing has really helped me get better with communicating and carrying myself in front of folks," he said. "It's been so beneficial for me that I have a legitimate desire to bring that to a lot of kids because there are a lot of kids who need confidence."

Kay also helps teach educators across the region about finding the confidence to engage their students in productive conversations about race. His first book about that issue, Not Light, but Fire: How to Have Meaningful Classroom Conversations About Race, is to be released in June by Stenhouse Publishers.

"Teachers can't afford to be quiet. None of us can," he said. "If we do not find a way to change the discourse about race, it will never get better. It will not naturally change. That's not the way history has worked."

As Kay, who also coaches varsity basketball, walks the art-covered halls of the Science Leadership Academy, students come up by the handful to give him hugs. In his classroom, art, photographs, and letters from students cover his walls.

"Dear Mr. Kay ..... My parents still don't believe that you act chill in class, yet I learn so much," one letter reads, in part. "I have never met a teacher, or person, that acts so genuine and open around others."

Kay grew up in a family of "teachers and preachers." His mom taught third grade in the Philadelphia School District for 36 years and his father teaches Sunday school at church.

Kay, who got into slam poetry while attending West Chester University, was one of the first teachers hired at Science Leadership Academy when it was founded in 2006. He began a poetry club at the high school, which eventually led to his founding the Philly Slam League.

Each school's team has its own coach, and every Friday, squads from 22 schools - public, private, and parochial - come together to perform their original works in a competition at the Free Library 's main branch on Vine Street.

The program not only develops writers and performers, but also - perhaps, more important - listeners. Kay teaches the students how to be good audience members, as well as good speakers.

"What I try to make clear to the kids is you don't know when was the last time that someone listened to this person," he said. "You don't know, they could have been waiting all week for this moment - for three minutes - and you have the opportunity to make somebody feel really good."

Kay said every season there are poems that shock him, that make him wonder how that brave young person baring his or her soul on stage can even still be standing. But there are other poems and moments of joy that move him just as much, he said.

"The kids have an incredible capacity for being warm and kind. That's not always the image you get of teenagers. Sometimes that's their fault, they portray a hardness, but it's so thin," he said. "It's easy to be sad and cynical. There's a vulnerability in being this excited. I think it's equally brave in this climate to be appreciative and kind."

Despite his love for the art, Kay said he tells his kids that poetry doesn't heal anyone, not really.

"There are systemic issues that cause that," he said. "But the building of confidence, to me, is everything."

Through his book, which he named after a line from a speech by Frederick Douglass, Kay addresses the systemic issue of racism and tries to give teachers the tools and confidence to talk about it in their classrooms.

"We know we should discuss privilege, we know we should discuss race, but many just don't know how," he said. "It's the how part I figured I had something to say about."

Kay said the way for teachers to do that is not in isolated discussions, but by threading it into conversations about books, history, and current affairs that are already happening in the classroom.

"If good people can't talk to each other then the bad people win, and there are legit bad guys out there," he said. "White folks have got to get over being scared. Black people have got to get over white people of goodwill making mistakes. Everybody has to get over it. We've all got to cut each other some slack. There's real work to do."

Why Philadelphia?

"I was born here, I was raised here and I feel a certain responsibility over this place."

What's been a classic Philly moment for you?

"The parade. Just seeing everybody out there just celebrating. It meant so much for the city not to be second fiddle to anybody, to get the inferiority complex off and just feel good."

If you had a wish for the city, what would it be?

"I want all of our kids to get a fair shot."

Know someone in the Philadelphia area whose story deserves to be told - or someone whose story you'd like to know? Send suggestions for We the People profiles to Stephanie Farr at farrs@phillynews.com or call her at 215-854-4225. Send tips via Twitter to @FarFarrAway.

Want more We the People?

Last week's profile: Nakia Maples, who is known online as the "Philly Plant Guy" and has more than 200 plants in his South Philly home.

From Jan. 31: Rich Friedrich is in charge of making the 10,000 wings needed for Philly's annual Wing Bowl event.

From Jan. 24: Sunny Bear is a Philly dog with more than 41,000 Twitter followers who channels The Art of War.

From Jan. 17: Brothers Joe and Vince Lattanzio tackle the Eagles' dirty laundry at their South Philly dry-cleaning shop.

From Jan. 10: Every Wednesday for 27 years, Kurt Martin has played the piano at the Lits Building food court.

From Jan. 3: At 88, Elaine Peden, who secured honorary U.S. citizenship for William and Hannah Penn, crashed a VIP event to meet Joe Biden.

From Dec. 27: Bucks County native Tracy Locke is one half of Girls Gone Green, a Philadelphia Eagles song parody duo.

From Dec. 20: Every Christmas season, Benjamin Franklin impersonator Robert DeVitis gets into character to ring the red kettle bell for the Salvation Army.

From Dec. 13: Hip-hop Grandpop Matt Hopkins busts holiday dance moves at City Hall.

From Dec. 6: People pay $1 just to take a photo of Anthony Smith and his dogs, Noodles and Diva. Smith takes his well-dressed dogs to events around the city in his bicycle basket.

From Nov. 29: Danie Ocean, a musician with a rare eye disease that's left her legally blind, is one of the founders of a co-op music studio that requires its members to do community service.

From Nov. 22: Nearly every day for 17 years, oil painter Mark Campana has hauled his easel from his home in South Philadelphia to Rittenhouse Square to paint scenes in and around the park.

From Nov. 15: Haircuts 4 Homeless barber Brennon Jones continues to serve people who are homeless at his new barbershop, which was given to him by a stranger who was inspired by his mission.

From Nov. 8: Street performers Eli Capella and Seraiah Nicole create music in real time that's inspired by the people who pass them on the streets of Philadelphia.

From Nov. 1: John Sebastian, the maintenance director at Reading Terminal Market, was a steel drummer who toured with a Caribbean orchestra and jammed with Jimmy Buffett.

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Slam poetry league founder: 'Teachers can't afford to be quiet' about race | We the People

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Matthew Kay first learned to tell stories as a child growing up in Germantown, by creating them with his mom. "We'd see an old woman walking a dog and she'd be like, 'What's her story?' And I'd be like, 'Well, that's the dog's grandmother,' " Kay said.

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Kenneth B Clark - Intelligence in the Service of Love and Kindness - 1984

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Trace the achievements of psychologist Kenneth Bancroft Clark, the first black president of the American Psychological Association, on Biography.com.

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Sixty years ago Jet magazine published photos of the disfigured and decomposed body of slain 14-year-old African American Emmett Till, rattling communities across the country and reigniting a widespread passion for the Civil Rights Movement. These photos were undeniably important to the dissemination of the story of Till's murder, but it is the actions of young mother Mamie Till Mobley that pushed her son's tragic death into the international spotlight.

When Mamie held an open casket funeral on September 3, 1955, she urged the world to look at her son's beaten, swollen body. The body, which was so disfigured that he was only identifiable by the initials on a ring on his finger, was viewed by thousands of people and photographed and published in newspapers and magazines.

"In order to come to grips with this tragedy, she saw Emmett as being crucified on the cross of racial injustice," says Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "And she felt that in order for his life not to be in vain, that she needed to use that moment to illuminate all of the dark corners of America and help push America toward what we now call the Civil Rights Movement."

Just a few weeks before Mamie became a nationally recognized figure, she was a young mother on the south side of Chicago, saying goodbye to her son as he boarded a train to Money, Mississippi. On August 28, 1955, Emmett, who was visiting relatives in Money, allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. After Bryant relayed the story to her husband and his half brother, they abducted Emmett at his great uncle's home and proceeded to brutally beat him, shoot him in the head and dump his body in a river.

The body was discovered three days later, and although Mississippi officials advocated for a quick burial of the body, Mamie requested it sent home to Chicago, where thousands of people attended the funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God.

In the months following Till's funeral, the Civil Rights Movement picked up speed beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Martin Luther King Jr. and inspired by Rosa Parks. The movement continued to gain momentum throughout the next few years as activists mobilized people across the country to fight for justice and equality. Mamie herself became an activist, speaking to large crowds about racial inequality and advocating for children in impoverished neighborhoods.

In 2004, Till's family agreed to exhume the body from its location in an Alsip, Illinois, cemetery to allow officials to conduct an autopsy on the body as part of a re-investigation of a number of Jim Crow-era related cases. According to state law, they were obligated to bury the body in a new casket after the autopsy was complete, which left the original casket empty. For some time, the original casket remained on site at the cemetery, but when Till's family members learned it was not being cared for properly they asked Bunch, a friend of Mamie's, to help them preserve it.

Bunch agreed to acquire and preserve the legendary casket among the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, where it will be on display in the Civil Rights exhibition at the African American History Museum, when it opens in the fall of 2016, alongside pieces about the March on Washington and Selma. As they walk through the exhibition, visitors will learn about Emmett Till's story and upon turning a corner they will be faced with the preserved casket, open as Mamie ordered on the day of Till's funeral.

"To be able to tell the story of Emmett Till will really help the public realize both the pain of this loss and the import of it," says Bunch. "What you hope is that some people will be startled, some moved, some challenged to recognize that silence about issues of hatred and racial violence lead to the loss of people like Emmett Till. And that's why I think we want people also to know that actions. . . like his mother's, can be transformative."

Perhaps the most striking-and alarming-part of Emmett Till's story is the familiarity it retains 60 years later.

"Emmett Till remains an example of the vulnerability of certain segments of our population and the fact that though America has changed in profound ways, the kind of assumptions, attitudes and beliefs that led to the murder of Emmett Till have not yet vanished in the United States," says Bunch.

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About Katie Nodjimbadem

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Emmett Till's Open Casket Funeral Reignited the Civil Rights Movement

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Sixty years ago Jet magazine published photos of the disfigured and decomposed body of slain 14-year-old African American Emmett Till, rattling communities across the country and reigniting a widespread passion for the Civil Rights Movement.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones: "Modern Day Segregation: How & Why Public Schools [...]" | Talks at Google

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Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later (TV Movie 2007)

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Directed by Brent Renaud. A look at the lives of various students attending the historical school, and the racial, social, and economic divisions that exist between them.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones - The Majority of White Americans Want School Segregation - The Opposition with Jordan Klepper (Video Clip) | Comedy Central

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New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones explains why school segregation is almost as bad today as it was prior to Brown v. Board of Education.

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Tupac - The Rose That Grew from Concrete 

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Tupac - The Rose That Grew from Concrete 

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Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack
in the concrete
Proving nature's laws wrong it learned 2 walk
without having feet
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else even cared!

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The Problem We All Live With - Part Two - This American Life

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"White people have moved the boundary before" - Ta-Nehisi Coates

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"White people have moved the boundary before" - Ta-Nehisi Coates

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The Problem We All Live With - Part One - This American Life

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There's one thing that has been proven to cut the achievement gap between black and white students by half: integration.

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Zoe Chace / This American Life

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PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION AND HISTORICAL POLICY ANALYSIS

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PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION AND HISTORICAL POLICY ANALYSIS

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The hunt for and destruction of brown and black flesh has never disappeared; it has been legalized and systematized. That pound of flesh is still paying its price and its face is staring at bars instead of hanging from a gallows. The school to prison pipeline and the “New Jim Crow” are the insidious systems that perpetuate racism, hatred, and the separation of the classes in the United States.

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"People are swept into the criminal justice system — particularly in poor communities of color — at very early ages ... typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes."

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The New Jim Crow - by Michelle Alexander

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The New Jim Crow - by Michelle Alexander

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Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were relegated to a subordinate status for decades. Things like literacy tests for voters and laws designed to prevent blacks from serving on juries were commonplace in nearly a dozen Southern states.

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

"People are swept into the criminal justice system - particularly in poor communities of color - at very early ages ... typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes," she tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "[The young black males are] shuttled into prisons, branded as criminals and felons, and then when they're released, they're relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement - like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, and access to education and public benefits. Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you've been branded a felon."

On Monday's Fresh Air, Alexander details how President Reagan's war on drugs led to a mass incarceration of black males and the difficulties these felons face after serving their prison sentences. She also details her own experiences working as the director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Interview Highlights
On the number of blacks in the criminal justice system
"Today there are more African-Americans under correctional control - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and jails or under correctional control. In major American cities today, more than half of working-age African-American men are either under correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives."
On the war on drugs - and federal incentives given out through the war on drugs - as the primary causes of the prison explosion in the United States
"Federal funding has flowed to state and local law enforcement agencies who boost the sheer numbers of drug arrests. State and local law enforcement agencies have been rewarded in cash for the sheer numbers of people swept into the system for drug offenses, thus giving law enforcement agencies an incentive to go out and look for the so-called 'low-hanging fruit': stopping, frisking, searching as many people as possible, pulling over as many cars as possible, in order to boost their numbers up and ensure the funding stream will continue or increase."
On President Reagan's war on drugs
"He declared the drug war primarily for reasons of politics - racial politics. Numerous historians and political scientists have documented that the war on drugs was part of a grand Republican Party strategy known as the "Southern strategy" of using racially coded 'get-tough' appeals on issues of crime and welfare to appeal to poor and working-class whites, particularly in the South, who were resentful of, anxious about and threatened by many of the gains of African-Americans in the civil rights movement."
On racial profiling
"I think it's very easy to brush off the notion that the system operates much like a caste system, if in fact you are not trapped within it. I have spent years representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color, and attempting to help people who have been released from prison attempting to 're-enter' into a society that never seemed to have much use to them in the first place. And in the course of that work, I had my own awakening about our criminal justice system and this system of mass incarceration. ... My experience and research has led me to the regrettable conclusion that our system of mass incarceration functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control."

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Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America

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Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were relegated to a subordinate status for decades. Things like literacy tests for voters and laws designed to prevent blacks from serving on juries were commonplace in nearly a dozen Southern states.

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Jessie Jackson saw the writing on the chalkboard in 2000! 

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Jessie Jackson saw the writing on the chalkboard in 2000! 

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ERIC - Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment in our Schools. A Handbook for Parents, Students, Educators, and Citizens., 2001

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This book presents the views of educators, intellectuals, students, and community activists to show that most students expelled from schools under new disciplinary measures are sent home for nonviolent violations; that the rush to judge and punish disproportionately affects black and Hispanic students; and that the new disciplinary ethos is eroding constitutional protections of privacy, free speech, and due process.

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American Kids & The School-To-Prison Pipeline

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The Fire Next Time - by by James Baldwin

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The Fire Next Time - by by James Baldwin

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Not Light, but FireHow to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the ClassroomMatthew R. Kay

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Not Light, but FireHow to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the ClassroomMatthew R. Kay

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Do you know how to initiate and facilitate productive dialogues about race in your classroom? Are you prepared to handle complex topics while keeping your students engaged?Inspired by Frederick Douglass's abolitionist call to action, "it is not light that is needed, but fire", author Matthew Kay demonstrates how to mov

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Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fear and the Black Experience

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Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fear and the Black Experience

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Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fear and the Black Experience | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

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The author of "Between the World and Me" ponders race, religion and the fear of violence.

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Between the World and Me - By Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Between the World and Me - By Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Between the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It was written by Coates as a letter to his then-teenage son about his perception of what the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States are. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son "racist violence that has been woven into American culture." Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing his beliefs about what are the ways in which, to him, institutions like schools, the local police, and even "the streets" discipline, endanger, and threaten to "disembody" black men and women.

The work takes structural and thematic inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 epistolary book The Fire Next Time. Unlike Baldwin, however, Coates views white supremacy as "an indestructible force, one that Black Americans will never evade or erase, but will always struggle against."

The novelist Toni Morrison praised the book, in that Coates "filled an intellectual gap in succession to James Baldwin." Editors of The New York Times and The New Yorker described the book as "exceptional." The book won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

Coates, 2015

Coates was inspired to write Between the World and Me following a 2013 meeting with sitting United States President Barack Obama. Coates, a writer for The Atlantic, had been reading James Baldwin's 1963 The Fire Next Time and was determined to make his second meeting with the president less deferential than his first. As he left for Washington, D.C., his wife encouraged him to think like Baldwin, and Coates recalled an unofficial, fiery meeting between Baldwin, Black activists, and Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. When it was his turn, Coates debated with Obama whether his policy sufficiently addressed racial disparities in the universal health care rollout. After the event, Obama and Coates spoke privately about a blog post Coates had written criticizing the president's call for more personal responsibility among African Americans. Obama disagreed with the criticism and told Coates not to despair.

As Coates walked to the train station, he thought about how Baldwin would not have shared Obama's optimism, the same optimism that supported many Civil Rights Movement activists' belief that justice was inevitable. Instead, Coates saw Baldwin as being fundamentally "cold," without "sentiment and melodrama" in his acknowledgment that the movement could fail and that requital was not guaranteed. Coates found this idea "freeing" and called his book editor, Christopher Jackson, to ask "why no one wrote like Baldwin anymore." Jackson proposed that Coates try.

Between the World and Me is Coates's second book, following his 2008 memoir The Beautiful Struggle. Since then, and especially in the 18 months including the Ferguson unrest preceding his new book's release, Coates somberly believed less in the soul and its aspirational sense of eventual justice. Coates felt that he had become more radicalized.

The book's title comes from Richard Wright's poem "Between the World and Me," originally published in the July/August 1935 issue of Partisan Review. Wright's poem is about a Black man discovering the site of a lynching and becoming incapacitated with fear, creating a barrier between himself and the world. Despite Between the World and Me undergoing many changes as the book was revised, Coates always planned to end with the story of Mabel Jones. The only endorsement Coates sought was that of novelist Toni Morrison, which he received. Between the World and Me was published by Spiegel & Grau in 2015.

The phrase "between the world and me" is literally in the text of Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.

"You must always remember," Coates writes to Samori, "that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body."

Between the World and Me takes the form of a book-length letter from the author to his son, adopting the structure of Baldwin's The Fire Next Time; the latter is directed, in part, towards Baldwin's nephew, while the former addresses Coates's 15-year-old son. Coates's letter is divided into three parts, recounting Coates's experiences as a young man, after the birth of his son, and during a visit with Mabel Jones. Coates contemplates the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States. He recapitulates the American history of violence against Black people and the incommensurate policing of Black youth. The book's tone is poetic and bleak, guided by his experiences growing up poor and always at risk of bodily harm. He prioritizes the physical security of African-American bodies over the tradition in Black Christianity of optimism, "uplift," and faith in eventual justice (i.e., being on God's side). As Coates discussed in a 2015 interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival, he was inspired by his college professor Eileen Boris who utilized an extended metaphor of the physical body for exploitation by objectification in her course, "History of Women in America" at Howard University. Her teachings inspired Coates's theme of the physical and visceral experience of racism on the body. His background, which he describes as "physicality and chaos," leads him to emphasize the daily corporeal concerns he experiences as an African-American in U.S. culture. Coates's position is that absent the religious rhetoric of "hope and dreams and faith and progress," only systems of White supremacy remain along with no real evidence that those systems are bound to change. In this way, he disagrees with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s optimism about integration and Malcolm X's optimism about nationalism.

Coates gives an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth "always on guard" in Baltimore and his fear of the physical harm threatened by both the police and the streets. He also feared the rules of code-switching to meet the clashing social norms of the streets, the authorities, and the professional world. He contrasts these experiences with neat suburban life, which he calls "the Dream" because it is an exclusionary fantasy for White people who are enabled by, yet largely ignorant of, their history of privilege and suppression. To become conscious of their gains from slavery, segregation, and voter suppression would shatter that Dream. The book ends with a story about Mabel Jones, the daughter of a sharecropper, who worked and rose in social class to give her children comfortable lives, including private schools and European trips. Her son, Coates's college friend Prince Carmen Jones Jr., was "mistakenly" tracked and killed by a policeman. Coates uses his friend's story to argue that racism and related tragedy affects Black people of means as well.

After reading Between the World and Me, novelist Toni Morrison wrote that Coates fills "the intellectual void" left by James Baldwin's death 28 years prior. A. O. Scott of The New York Times said the book is "essential, like water or air." David Remnick of The New Yorker described it as "extraordinary."

In Politico, Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, cited Coates' "monstrous" passage about Black people who died in 9/11. Most people, wrote Lowrey, would not think, as Coates did, "They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could - with no justification - shatter my body."

Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote that the phrasing of his comments on 9/11 could be easily misread. Between the World and Me functioned as a sequel to Coates's 2008 memoir, which displayed Coates's talents as an emotional and lyrical writer. Coates's use of "the Dream" (in reference to paradisal suburban life) confused her, and she thought Coates stretched beyond what is safely generalizable. Kakutani thought that Coates did not consistently acknowledge racial progress achieved over the course of centuries and that some parts read like the author's internal debate. Benjamin Wallace-Wells of magazine said that a sense of fear for one's children propels the book, and Coates's atheism gives the book a sense of urgency.

On November 18, 2015, it was announced that Coates had won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me. NPR's Colin Dwyer had considered it the favorite to win the prize, given the book's reception. It also won the 2015 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.

The book topped The New York Times Best Seller list for nonfiction on August 2, 2015, and remained number 1 for three weeks. It topped the same list again during the week of January 24, 2016.

The book was selected by Washington University in St. Louis and Augustana College in 2016, as the book for all first-year students to read and discuss in the fall 2016 semester. In the same year, the book was ranked 7th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.

In February 2023, an AP English teacher in South Carolina's Lexington & Richland County School District Five was forced to halt a lesson on the book by school administrators, who claimed that the lesson violated state budget provisions. South Carolina law prohibits the use of state funds for lessons that teach that "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex" or "an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."

Hardcover, English. Spiegel & Grau; 1 edition (July 14, 2015) ISBN 978-0812993547

E-book, English. Spiegel & Grau; 1 edition (July 14, 2015) ASIN: B00SEFAIRI

Hardcover, French. "Une colère noire : Lettre à mon fils." AUTREMENT (January 27, 2016) ISBN 978-2746743410

E-book, French. "Une colère noire : Lettre à mon fils." AUTREMENT (January 27, 2016) ASIN: B01A91OE0G

Hardcover, German. Miriam Mandelkow (Translator) "Zwischen mir und der Welt." Hanser Berlin (February 1, 2016) ISBN 978-3446251076

E-book, German. Miriam Mandelkow (Translator) "Zwischen mir und der Welt." Hanser Berlin (February 1, 2016) ASIN: B018VATBL4

Paperback, Spanish. Javier Calvo Perales (Translator) "Entre el mundo y yo." (nd) ISBN 978-8432229657

E-book, Spanish. Javier Calvo Perales (Translator) "Entre el mundo y yo." Seix Barral (October 18, 2016) ASIN: B01IPXTMS4

Paperback, Catalan. Josefina Caball Guerrero (Translator). "Entre el món i jo." (nd) ISBN 978-8416367719

E-book, Catalan. Josefina Caball Guerrero (Translator). "Entre el món i jo." (October 19, 2016) ASIN: B01JB6TWY8

Hardcover, Norwegian. Bodil Engen (Translator). "Mellom verden og meg." Heinesen forl. (2016) ISBN 9788281770430

Hardcover, Korean. 오은숙 (Translator). "세상과 나 사이." 열린책들 (September 5, 2016) ISBN 9788932917788, 8932917787

Hardcover, Polish. Dariusz Żukowski (Translator). "Między światem a mną." Agora S.A. (May 26, 2021) ISBN 9788326845796, 8326845795

Hardcover, Dutch. Rutger H. Cornets de Groot (Translator) "Tussen de wereld en mij." Amsterdam University Press (November 1, 2015) ISBN 9789462981546

Paperback, Portuguese. Paulo Geiger (Translator) "Entre o Mundo e Eu." Objetiva (November 1, 2015) ISBN 9788539007202

Paperback, Turkish. Pınar Umman (Translator) "Dünyayla Benim Aramda" Monokl (January 1, 2016) ISBN 9786055159511

Paperback, Romanian. Elena Marcu (Translator), Adi Păun (Translator) "Între lume și mine" Black Button Books (January 1, 2017) ISBN 9786069423790

Paperback, Chinese. 塔-奈希西·科茨, 宋瑛堂 (Translator) "在世界與我之間" 衛城出版 (October 5, 2016) ISBN 9789869351829

Paperback, Hebrew. טא-נהסי קואטס, זהר אלמקייס (translator) בין העולם וביני" הקיבוץ המאוחד" (January 1, 2018)

Hardcover, Italian. Chiara Stangalino (Translator) "Tra me e il mondo" Codice (May 19, 2016) ISBN 9788875786052

Hardcover, Slovenian. Petra Meterc (translator and foreword) "Med svetom in mano" Cankarjeva založba (November 1, 2021) ISBN 9789612824914

Paperback, Arabic. تا نيهيسي كوتس, محمد فتحي خضر (Translator) بين العالم وبيني" دار التنوير" (February 1, 2021) ISBN 9786144721629

On September 30, 2020, HBO announced that it had adapted Between the World and Me as an 80-minute-long television special, which premiered on November 21, 2020. Between the World and Me was initially adapted and staged in 2018 by the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. The HBO adaptation of Between the World and Me combines elements of the 2018 production at the Apollo Theater, readings from the book, and documentary footage from the actors' home lives. Both the Apollo and HBO versions are directed by Kamilah Forbes. The HBO special included appearances by around 20 celebrities and civil rights activists including Oprah Winfrey, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Davis, Mahershala Ali, Joe Morton, Yara Shahidi and Angela Bassett. The production used Baltimore street scene photographs by John Clark Mayden, which the Baltimore Sun called "powerful images".

1. (Subscription required.)

2. ^

3. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (July 9, 2015). "Review: In 'Between the World and Me,' Ta-Nehisi Coates Delivers a Searing Dispatch to His Son". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 17, 2022.

4. Butler, Robert, ed. ^ The Richard Wright Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2008. p. 38.

5. ^

6. ^ Baldwin, James (1963). The Fire Next Time. Dial Press. p. 27 (Vintage International copy). ISBN 0-679-74472-X. all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...

7. Remnick, David (June 19, 2015). "Charleston and the Age of Obama". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on July 7, 2015.

8. ^

9. ^ Gross, Terry (July 13, 2015). "Ta-Nehisi Coates On Police Brutality, The Confederate Flag And Forgiveness". Fresh Air. NPR.

10. ^ Rich Lowry (July 22, 2015). "The Toxic World-View of Ta-Nehisi Coates". Politico.

11. ^

12. ^ "Augie Reads summer essay", Augustana College.

13. Keaggy, Diane Toroian (May 9, 2015), ^ "First Year Reading Program selects 'Between the World and Me'", Washington University in St. Louis.

14. ^ (subscription required)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Between the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It was written by Coates as a letter to his then-teenage son about his perception of what the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States are.

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With the possible exception of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., no African American has been more instrumental in the fight for minorities' civil rights in the United States than Frederick Douglass 1818-1895), an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman.

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The Souls of Black Folk - By WEB Du Bois

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The Souls of Black Folk - By WEB Du Bois

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On Being with Krista Tippett and Ta-Nehisi Coates

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On Being with Krista Tippett and Ta-Nehisi Coates

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On Being with Krista Tippett and Ta-Nehisi Coates