On Sunday, January 18, just before MLK Day, OWN aired the documentary Light Girls. The film is a follow-up to the documentary Dark Girls, which toured the indie film circuit a couple of years ago. I attended a special luncheon in 2012 where I had the opportunity to interview D. Channsin Berry, one of the directors/producers of Dark Girls, and…
My father grew up in Selma, Alabama, and my extended family gathered there for Thanksgiving in 2014. There were about 100 of us at Thanksgiving dinner. Our family has very deep roots in Selma and in Gee’s Bend (famous for the quilts in the Smithsonian). My aunts and uncles marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and our family has driven across that bridge a thousand times.
It’s amazing. I have been to Selma dozens of times in my life, and it holds a place in my heart that is mostly centered around homemade food, firecrackers, cousins, gravel roads, trailer parks, poverty, and simplicity. Seeing it as an adult, I see the effects that the bad PR of racism had on the city. Selma is impoverished, lacking jobs, has a high violent crime rate, full of empty storefronts, and still segregated.
I wanted to interview SELMA director Ava DuVernay after hearing her speak at the BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta, but I was unable to interview her, because…well…she’s a Golden Globe nominee and I am not Barbara Walters or Oprah…Alas, here are some photos from my trip of the REAL Selma.
"In 1968, I was still working as a social worker and taking classes at Columbia University. At the time, the black students held a demonstration because they were not allowed to have black history classes at the university. They held a sit-in in Hamilton Hall, and I crawled through a window and locked myself in with the students for a…
“Yeah,” he continued anxiously. “I’m okay. I guess. … Do you think they saw which dorm I went back to? Maybe I shouldn’t have told my roommate. Should I stay in my dorm and not go to the library tonight?” This article was published weeks ago, and I have been meaning to share it. "I taught my black kids that…
"Eunice Johnson came from a well-to-do family, and part of her goal with the Ebony Fashion Fair was to show that not all black people were destitute. One of her challenges was to convince European design houses that there were black people with enough wealth to purchase high fashion garments and that those designers would not lose clients by putting…
Here is the proof: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/arts/music/andre-3000-is-moving-on-in-film-music-and-life.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1 "Part of art is knowing when not to put paint on. And when to change your medium." "I hate cages, and sometimes nostalgia is a cage." "What I get off on is doing things people said could not be done. And so if I’m at a place where I feel like I’m regurgitating or doing…