Eddie Murphy made his Saturday Night Live debut back in November of 1980 in a spoof of the TV show Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom entitled In Search of the Negro Republican. The basic idea behind the pointed political skit was that Black Republicans were such a rare, strange and alien curiosity that you’d have to mount an expedition just to find one. While that silly SNL … [Read more...]
‘Black Male Frames,’ chronicles Hollywood’s narrow vision
“Black Male Frames charts the development and shifting popularity of two stereotypes of black male masculinity in popular American film: The shaman and the scoundrel… [The book] identifies the origins of these roles in an America where Black men were forced either to defer or to defy their White masters. These figures recur in the stories America tells about its Black men, … [Read more...]
Black Dynamite: A comic book dripping with racial indecency
Although Hollywood has become saturated with a preponderance of superhero films—namely those licensed by the Marvel Comics franchise—these projects rarely, if ever, feature an African American lead. In the comic-book realm, a sweeping wave of cultural diversity has inspired the “browning” of numerous, formerly European characters, including the ever-popular Spiderman, Captain … [Read more...]
Crusading journalist’s anti-lynching writings make for fiery reading
“Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. After beginning a teaching career to support her orphaned siblings, she moved to Memphis to become a journalist… In 1883, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a train, an experience that she chronicled in her first published piece. Though Wells achieved success as a writer, editor and even … [Read more...]
Anthology gives MN Black writers well-deserved recognition
Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society/Minnesota Humanities Center), prose and poetry culled from the proverbial cream of the Twin Cities crop of African American authors, is a book you want to have sitting on your coffee table. Not just as some sort of intelligentsia ornament — though, yes, it’ll serve the purpose — preferably as … [Read more...]