The right train headed in the wrong direction is the wrong train for you. Tonight, while heading home from a remarkable lecture by Professor Hortense Spillers at Barnard College, I found the right train line to take me back towards Harlem. Then I zoned out just long enough to transfer onto an express train going […]
Editing Means Reality Shaping
Black History Month means unearthing grainy black-and-white photos of Black people from archives, backrooms, and attics everywhere. The New York Times played this storyline literally this year, announcing a month-long series of photos never before published in the print newspaper or digital site. The newspaper’s photographers once wandered Black neighborhoods and followed Black civil rights leaders and […]
The Under-told Western Hemisphere Black History Boat Tour
This casual essay, which began as a series of tweets posted over 3 hours on July 4, 2015, focuses on the English, Caribbean, and mainland U.S. components of the Western Hemisphere’s story: these are the parts that intersect with my lineage. There is much, much more to be told, particularly of the Black Africans that White Spanish […]
From Science Fiction to Science Possibility
Dr. Ronald E. McNair was the second African-American to work in space (the first was Dr. Guion “Guy” Bluford), and died with his Space Shuttle crew members when the Challenger exploded shortly after take-off in 1986. My alma mater, Texas Tech University, is one of 200 US universities that runs a McNair Scholars program for low-income, first-generation college students […]
