It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
It is beyond ironic that, in a book about rock & roll history, the co-founder of Rolling Stone purposely chose to exclude the very people who originated the work he extols. In a NY Times interview about the White men he calls rock & roll “masters,” Jann Wenner actually said that Black musicians “just didn’t articulate at that level.” It is beyond ironic coming from an editor whose magazine shares its name with a rock band that took its name from the blues legend Muddy Waters. These scenes are from one of the most iconic moments in music history. It was the night in Chicago in 1981 when The Rolling Stones took the stage with their idol Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side. The Stones were in town for a concert of their own and stopped at the Checkerboard where Muddy Waters was playing. They took a seat in the audience. But Muddy Waters called them to the stage one by one. Mick Jagger made his way through the crowd, followed by Keith Richards and the rest. They performed Muddy Waters classics like “Baby Please Don’t Go.” The Stones knew the songs by heart because they had been obsessed with them since adolescence. Muddy Waters was a part of how the band came to be: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had grown up together in grade school, but the Jaggers moved away. The boys pursued music on their own. Then on October 17, 1961, they ran into each other on the railway platform in Dartford Station, south of London. Mick Jagger was carrying records by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, and the two picked up a conversation over their shared love of the blues. They would later name their band after a song by the blues musician who had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and whose music had brought them together. Wenner has since been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and issued an apology. But on that Chicago night in 1981, there was no question. One of the most influential rock bands of all time paid tribute to the musician who had inspired them, and it was clear that night who the master was. The video of that night is exhilarating, a historical treasure that I urge you to watch. So far, it has 24 million views on YouTube.
As if there were not enough heartbreak in the case of an Indian graduate student who was tragically killed by a speeding police car in Seattle last January, now body cam footage released this week shows an officer laughing at her death, saying that her life had “limited value” and that the city could “just write a check.” Caste is the arbitrary assigning of value and of roles to people in a ranked hierarchy and the diminishment of those assigned beneath the dominant group. We know the groups that fall into the least valued categories in our society, based on what they look like or are assumed to be. And nothing could be starker than this literal computation over the loss of Jaahnavi Kandula’s life. The officer’s side of a conversation with a police union leader was caught accidentally and surfaced this week after a department employee heard it and sent it up the chain of command. The case is under investigation. The officer describes the horrific circumstances when a police car going 74 miles an hour struck her at a pedestrian crosswalk and killed her. He makes light of it, saying she wasn’t hurled as far some were reporting. “But she is dead,” the officer tells the union leader. He laughs and says, “No, it’s a regular person.” Then he says, “Yeah, just write a check,” and laughs again. “Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26 anyway,” the officer says, though she was actually 23. “She had limited value.” Kandula was scheduled to receive a master’s degree in information systems in December. She had been working to take care of her mother back in India. Her uncle told The Seattle Times: “The family has nothing to say. Except I wonder if these men’s daughters or granddaughters have value. A life is a life.” #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents
This is the history they want to keep out of the schools. This is what they want us to forget. It was this week in 1957 that the Little Rock Nine had to be escorted by Army paratroopers in riot gear in order to finally walk through the front doors of Little Rock Central High School. All month, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine black students from enrolling, and mobs of white citizens had surrounded and taunted the students to block their entry. The nine were chosen to be among the first African-Americans to attend a segregated school in the South after the Supreme Court banned racial segregation in 1954. They were: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls. They were to have arrived together to enroll on the first day of school. But 15-year-old Eckford, whose family did not have a phone, did not get word of a last-minute change in meeting plans. In her starched dress and sunglasses, she arrived alone. A mob of white students surrounded and stalked her as they hurled epithets (as captured in a legendary UPI photograph by Johnny Jenkins). The nine would be forced to study at home for the next two weeks. Under international pressure, President Eisenhower finally intervened and pressed Governor Faubus to withdraw his troops. On Sept. 23, 1957, the nine students, this time with city police officers, managed to get in by the side door. But when the crowd of enraged white citizens got wind that the black students had made it into the building, they broke into the school to hunt them down. The students had to escape yet again. On Sept. 24, 1957, President Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne division of the United States Army so that the Nine could finally begin their classes. But the resentments could not so easily be quelled. The Little Rock Nine would endure a year of taunts and harassment. They were spat upon, isolated and assaulted. This is not ancient history. Many of the people in these photos are alive, influencing current generations. #caste #history
This is the history they want to keep out of the schools. This is what they want us to forget. It was this week in 1957 that the Little Rock Nine had to be escorted by Army paratroopers in riot gear in order to finally walk through the front doors of Little Rock Central High School. All month, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine black students from enrolling, and mobs of white citizens had surrounded and taunted the students to block their entry. The nine were chosen to be among the first African-Americans to attend a segregated school in the South after the Supreme Court banned racial segregation in 1954. They were: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls. They were to have arrived together to enroll on the first day of school. But 15-year-old Eckford, whose family did not have a phone, did not get word of a last-minute change in meeting plans. In her starched dress and sunglasses, she arrived alone. A mob of white students surrounded and stalked her as they hurled epithets (as captured in a legendary UPI photograph by Johnny Jenkins). The nine would be forced to study at home for the next two weeks. Under international pressure, President Eisenhower finally intervened and pressed Governor Faubus to withdraw his troops. On Sept. 23, 1957, the nine students, this time with city police officers, managed to get in by the side door. But when the crowd of enraged white citizens got wind that the black students had made it into the building, they broke into the school to hunt them down. The students had to escape yet again. On Sept. 24, 1957, President Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne division of the United States Army so that the Nine could finally begin their classes. But the resentments could not so easily be quelled. The Little Rock Nine would endure a year of taunts and harassment. They were spat upon, isolated and assaulted. This is not ancient history. Many of the people in these photos are alive, influencing current generations. #caste #history
This is the history they want to keep out of the schools. This is what they want us to forget. It was this week in 1957 that the Little Rock Nine had to be escorted by Army paratroopers in riot gear in order to finally walk through the front doors of Little Rock Central High School. All month, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine black students from enrolling, and mobs of white citizens had surrounded and taunted the students to block their entry. The nine were chosen to be among the first African-Americans to attend a segregated school in the South after the Supreme Court banned racial segregation in 1954. They were: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls. They were to have arrived together to enroll on the first day of school. But 15-year-old Eckford, whose family did not have a phone, did not get word of a last-minute change in meeting plans. In her starched dress and sunglasses, she arrived alone. A mob of white students surrounded and stalked her as they hurled epithets (as captured in a legendary UPI photograph by Johnny Jenkins). The nine would be forced to study at home for the next two weeks. Under international pressure, President Eisenhower finally intervened and pressed Governor Faubus to withdraw his troops. On Sept. 23, 1957, the nine students, this time with city police officers, managed to get in by the side door. But when the crowd of enraged white citizens got wind that the black students had made it into the building, they broke into the school to hunt them down. The students had to escape yet again. On Sept. 24, 1957, President Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne division of the United States Army so that the Nine could finally begin their classes. But the resentments could not so easily be quelled. The Little Rock Nine would endure a year of taunts and harassment. They were spat upon, isolated and assaulted. This is not ancient history. Many of the people in these photos are alive, influencing current generations. #caste #history
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I have been on the road lecturing virtually nonstop the last few months, and one of the great, bittersweet, existential joys of my life was returning to the land of my forefathers, in the haunted capital of the former Confederacy, in the birthplace of American slavery. There I was, speaking on the stage of the Richmond Forum in a magnificent theater whose front doors my Virginia ancestors would not have been able to enter not that long ago. Standing there before a packed house and an overflow room beyond, I could only think of my beloved father from southern Virginia, my first and most devoted champion, ever the worrier and protector, who never had the chance to see the full fruits of his sacrifice, never had the chance to see the books that his daughter would one day produce. It was an unimaginable honor to speak in the same forum where Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bob Woodward, Barack and Michelle Obama once spoke. I looked out from the podium into the sea of expectant faces and felt my father there with me as I spoke of the history that we ignore at our own peril. How I wished he could have lived to see this day. He was a Tuskegee airman; but, after the war, he and his fellow airmen were prohibited from working as pilots, barred from the very work at which they had excelled. They had to forgo their dreams and remake themselves. He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He became a builder of bridges. So I am, quite literally, the daughter of a builder of bridges. And everything I do and every word I write, I do in honor of that legacy and of the ancestors — the people whose names I will never know and whose faces I can never conjure, who somehow survived the Middle Passage and landed in ports along the Chesapeake. ——— Photos 1 to 8, courtesy of @richmondforum, whose audience so generously graced me with their warmth and ovations. Photo 9, my father as a Tuskegee Airman. #history #richmondforum #tuskegeeairmen
I am overjoyed and frankly stunned that my firstborn book is now a teenager. The Warmth of Other Suns debuted 13 years ago today. The Great Migration was rarely spoken of in classrooms or dinner tables or book clubs in this country before Warmth entered people’s hearts in 2010 and helped make this historic movement an everyday part of the mainstream. In fact, in the years I spent I researching this book, I’d had a hard time getting people to relate to what I was talking about. Now, the Great Migration is part of curricula and embedded in how many Black families see themselves — with pride rather than shame over what their ancestors suffered under Jim Crow and how they escaped. Since then, I’ve been overcome with joy that the book and its title have inspired artists in multiple genres to engage with the magnitude of this work of history: Two ballets — one in Memphis, one at the Kennedy Center; art exhibitions in Washington, Mississippi and Baltimore; the magnificent art of the brilliant collagist Bisa Butler, multiple songs and classical music compositions, including one performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; a transcendent concert at Carnegie Hall, and the seminal breakout essay that Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote for The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” about which he said that The Warmth of Other Suns was “the mother of the piece.” Then last June, Warmth was entered into the historic record of the United States Supreme Court when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson cited the book in her seminal dissent to the overturning of affirmative action. There is no greater honor than to see your hard work and ideas take root and expand beyond their own shores. These are some of the glorious and wide-ranging ways that art can beget art, creativity can birth creativity, that history can invite further inquiry and introspection. These are the beautiful artistic offspring inspired by the six million brave souls who dared to escape Jim Crow and by the book that brought their journeys to life. And Warmth is beamingly proud, grateful, and at one with them all. #thewarmthofothersuns #isabelwilkerson
“I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown….” The man who wrote those words, channeling the dreams of the people of the Great Migration, was Richard Wright, born on this day, Sept. 4, 1908, outside Natchez, MS. The son of a sharecropper who could neither read nor write, he would become one of the most influential novelists of the 20th Century and an inspiration for The Warmth of Other Suns. His family suffered one upheaval after another: the breakup of the parents’ marriage, the mother’s failing health as she then labored as a domestic; her sons landing for a time in an orphanage; and, the mother’s paralysis from a stroke when Richard was 10, forcing him to leave school to find work. He ran errands and sold newspapers, eventually returning to school and becoming valedictorian of his graduating class. Throughout, Richard dreamt of escape and devoured the few books he could get hold of. In 1927, at the age of 19, he fled the Jim Crow South on the Illinois Central Railroad to feel what he called “the warmth of other suns.” In Chicago, he worked washing dishes and sweeping streets before landing a job at the post office. He began going to the library, something he could not do in his home state of Mississippi. In 1940, he published Native Son, to national acclaim, and, in 1945, his autobiography, Black Boy, a seminal narrative of the Great Migration and of the human desire to be free. He sought the warmth of other suns throughout his life, disheartened by the intolerance he found in the North. When he lived in Greenwich Village, barbers refused to serve him and some restaurants refused to seat him. When he bid on a house in suburban New York, the owners refused to sell to a black person. He fled to Paris with his family in the late 1940’s and died there in November 1960, at age 52. Today, the boy who was not permitted to walk into a library in Mississippi has a branch named after him in Jackson. And near the state capitol, there stand the statues of the literary legends of Mississippi: Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and, yes, the native son who had to flee, Richard Wright. #thewarmthofothersuns
