Why I Have Decided to Keep my Very Naturally Curly Hair Long:
My presently long reddish hair has always been quite curly. When I was a baby and very small child, my hair was kept short, and, as a baby, it was in ringlets all around my head. Not so much as a...
View ArticleTLW: The Final Pastoral Perspective of the Homegoing of Aretha Louise Franklin
I refused to watch the entire half-day long service, because my personal opinion is that no matter who you are or were in this life, it only takes 45 minutes to an hour to lay someone to rest, anyone...
View ArticleRemembering the "White Queen of Soul" on the 80th anniversary of her birth...
The teacher can be forgiven if she dismissed as an impossible dream the English schoolgirl’s declaration that she wanted to be a jazz singer when she grew up. Young Mary O’Brien was a gawky tomboy with...
View ArticleRemembering the "White Queen of Soul" on the 80th anniversary of her birth...
Part 1 of this tribute to Dusty Springfield was published yesterday. Click here to read it.Go west!In 1968, Dusty’s recording contract with Phillips ended and she jumped ship to Atlantic. It seemed...
View Article60's underground Impresario Art Kunkin has died
Art Kunkin was the founder and publisher of the Los Angeles Free Press. This was the newspaper for progressives in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The only progressive media of the time the radio station KPFK...
View ArticleA Brief History of Berkeley Public School Integration in the 1960s
In the 1950s the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) was run by an all white school board and central office staff which didn’t really deal with the changing racial makeup of the city and its...
View ArticleThis is infuriating..........and FUN!
You probably all know how George Will and Ronald Reagan transformed Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” from an attack on blind nationalism to a patriotic anthem.For some reason, there is currently a...
View ArticleBlack people have reason to distrust police, and other lessons from Fred...
Exactly 50 years ago, Black Panther Party of Illinois Chairman Fred Hampton was killed. A white gang raided his West Side Chicago apartment and fired approximately 99 bullets, killing not only...
View ArticleBlack folk musicians created the soundtrack for a movement—and helped Bob...
I had a conversation about music recently with a white friend, a “folkie” who annually attends the folk music festivals that take place frequently here in the northeastern part of the United States. We...
View ArticleCan the human voice replace an instrument? Inside the magic of vocalese jazz
As this series continues to explore musical genres with major roots in the Black American experience, I’d like to take a point of personal privilege and focus on the music that drew me into becoming...
View ArticleWhen jazz met funk, it went platinum—respectability politics be damned
After having a blast exploring George Clinton’s Mothership and the Blackness of funk music last Sunday, it’s time to take a listen to the impact of funk hooking up with jazz—a topic that made quite a...
View ArticleThese crooners stepped all over Jim Crow with their love songs—and some paid...
Everyone loves a love song, and there is a long musical history of “crooners” who caused hearts to beat a bit faster, leading to mass swooning at their performances. Where Black male artists were...
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“This vote must really be about something”: Unita Blackwell’s story of voter...
There are two ways to win an election in America. One is the standard used by viable democracies around the world: convince a majority to vote for your candidate.The second rests on sinister trickery:...
View ArticleWhat is your favorite TV show from the 1960s?
There were many great TV shows that aired in the 1960sFrom Sci Fi, to comedy to drama and everything in between there were so many great programs that coming up with a single favorite might be tough…...
View ArticleCivil Rights era icon Willie McCleod, one of the Friendship Nine of Rock Hill...
A very quick diary on the passing of an African-American Civil Rights era icon, as just reported in the state-wide newspaper The State:Willie McCleod, a member of the Friendship Nine from Rock Hill who...
View ArticleDo you have a song from the 1960s that is a current favorite to hear?
My current favorite 1960s song actually came out very early in the decade of the 60s. Does the diary photo up on top give you a clue as to what the song is?xYouTube VideoJust the songs flow, hypnotic...
View ArticleRest in power, Gloria Richardson
Few people who have ever seen the iconic photo of Gloria Richardson pushing a National Guardsman's bayonet aside in Cambridge, Maryland. on July 21, 1963, could ever forget it. Like many women who...
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Nonfiction Views: The Shattering: America in the 1960s, by Kevin Boyle
I had a 1960s boyhood, growing up in San Jose, California, just 50 miles from San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, where so many of the influential events of the decade took place. I can’t say any of...
View ArticleI Remember the Before Times
I just shared this in the comments to Dan Rather’s response to the conversation in the Supreme Court re: Roe v. Wade. He sees the very real possibility that we may lose that precious right in the very,...
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Contemporary Fiction Views: Falling in love with a book
A beautiful evening, a beautiful woman preparing herself for a beautiful dinner in a beautiful English suburb in 1967 -- Tessa Hadley sets the stage for a novel that shows how everything brittle...
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