Best African American Essays 2010

The Presidential Election of 2008

“A More Perfect Union” By Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. Obama graduated from in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama was the Democratic nominee in the 2008 Presidential election with running mate, Joe Biden and is currently the 44th President of the United States and first African American to do so.

“A Deeper Black” By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Nation http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was born in Baltimore, MD in 1975 and attended , is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and blogs on its website. Coates has worked for The Village Voice; Washington City Paper; and Time. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine; ; The Washington Monthly; O; and other publications. In 2008 he published a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.

“Obama No” By Adolph Reed Jr., The Progressive

Adolph Reed, Jr. is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in race and American politics. Reed also taught at Yale, Northwestern and the New School for Social Research. An expert on racial and economic inequality, he is a founder of the Labor Party and a frequent contributor to The Progressive and The Nation.

“Who Died and Made Tavis King?” By Melissa Harris-Lacewell, The Root http://www.melissaharrislacewell.com/

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, (Princeton 2004). And she is currently at work on a new book: Sister Citizen: A Text For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn't Enough (Forthcoming Yale University Press). Her work is published in scholarly journals and edited volumes and her interests include the study of African American political thought, black religious ideas and practice, and social and clinical psychology. Professor Harris- Lacewell appears regularly on MSNBC. She regularly provides expert commentary on U.S. elections, racial issues, religious questions and gender concerns for both The Rachel Maddow Show and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Professor Harris-Lacewell is also a regular guest on other television and radio. Her writings have appeared in newspapers throughout the country and she is a regular contributor at TheNation.com. Professor Harris-Lacewell received her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University , her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School. She is currently a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

“What Obama Means to the World” By Gary Younge, The Nation

Gary Younge, the Alfred Knobler Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the New York correspondent for the Guardian and the author of No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South (Mississippi) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States (New Press). Younge is a British journalist and author, born to immigrant parents from Barbados. Younge read French and Russian at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He went on to study at City University, London where he gained a Post-graduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism in 1993. HE has a monthly column for The Nation called "Beneath the Radar." He also contributes to The Notion. Younge is also currently a Belle Zeller visiting scholar at Brooklyn College, where he teaches classes on media and politics.

“Finally, a Thin President” By Colson Whitehead, The New York Times http://www.colsonwhitehead.com/Home/Home.html

Colson Whitehead was born in 1969, and was raised in Manhattan. After graduating from Harvard College, he started working at the Village Voice, where he wrote reviews of television, books, and music. His first novel, The Intuitionist, was a winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award. John Henry Days followed in 2001, an investigation of the steel- driving man of American folklore. The novel received the Young Lions Fiction Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Colossus of New York is a book of essays about the city. It was published in 2003 and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) is a novel about a "nomenclature consultant" who gets an assignment to name a town, and was a recipient of the PEN/Oakland Award. Sag Harbor, published in 2009, is a novel about teenagers hanging out in Sag Harbor, Long Island during the summer of 1985. Colson Whitehead's reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times; The New Yorker; New York Magazine; Harper's; and Granta. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

“Judge Obama on Performance Alone” By Juan Williams, The Wall Street Journal

Juan Williams is a news analyst, appearing regularly in the newsmagazines Morning Edition and Day to Day. From 2000-2001, Williams hosted NPR's national call-in show Talk of the Nation and is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, released February 2000. He is also the author of the nonfiction bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, the companion volume to the critically acclaimed television series. This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience appeared in February 2003 and was the basis for a six-part public broadcasting TV documentary that aired in June 2003. In 2004, Williams became involved with AARP's Voices of Civil Rights project, leading a veteran team of reporters and editors in the production of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience. In 2006, Williams came out with another book entitled Enough. He has won an Emmy award for TV documentary writing and won widespread critical acclaim for a series of documentaries including "Politics - The New Black Power." Articles by Williams have appeared in magazines ranging from Newsweek, Fortune, and The Atlantic Monthly to Ebony, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and The New Republic. Williams continues to be a contributing political analyst for the Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday. A graduate of Haverford College, Williams received a B.A. in philosophy in 1976. Currently, he sits on a number of boards, including the Haverford College Board of Trustees, the Aspen Institute of Communications and Society Program, Washington Journalism Center and the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

“Obama, The Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future” By David A. Hollinger, Callaloo

David A. Hollinger was born April 25, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois and is the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written several books of which his source book, The American Intellectual Tradition, is amongst the most widely used textbooks in college undergraduate courses focusing on American intellectual history since the Civil War. He is also a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, attaining his Ph.D. in 1970. Hollinger is currently president-elect of the Organization of American Historians. He is also on the editorial board of several journals including Comparative Studies in Society and History, Modern Intellectual History and The Journal of the History of Ideas.

Our Michelle

“What Michelle Can Teach Us” By Allison Samuels, Newsweek

Allison Samuels has been a national correspondent since June of 1999 and correspondent with Newsweek's Los Angeles bureau since 1996. Samuels joined Newsweek in 1994 as a researcher, and was promoted to reporter in January of 1996. Before joining the magazine, the Georgia native worked for producer Quincy Jones and at the Hollywood super agency CAA. She also was a reporter for The Los Angeles Times. This year Samuels released the book Off The Record, (HarperCollins) detailing her interviews with Denzel Washington, Kobe Bryant, Halle Berry, Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby. Her first book Christmas Soul (Jump At the Sun/Disney) was released in 2003. Samuels was awarded a first place Deadline Club Award in 2004 for Newsweek's cover article on Kobe Bryant. It also earned the first place features prize from the National Association of Black Journalists the same year. Samuels was also honored with a first place Clarion Award for her profile of actor Denzel Washington in 2003. Samuels has also won numerous New York Association of Black Journalists Awards. Recently, Samuels was asked by talk show host Oprah Winfrey to travel to South Africa with her to report on her process of choosing girls for her leadership academy. Samuels graduated from Clark Atlanta University in 1988 with a B.A. in Mass communications. She is a member of the Association of Black Journalists, the Big Sisters of America and a past member of the UCLA Black Studies Department Board of Directors. She is currently a contributing editor at Essence Magazine and an entertainment correspondent for National Public Radio's "News and Notes'' show and resides in Los Angeles.

“Movin‟ On Up” By Margo Jefferson, New York

Margo L. Jefferson was appointed critic-at-large, covering theater, at the New York Times in 1996, after having served as Sunday theater critic since January 1995. Previously, Jefferson served as a critic on the culture desk since joining The Times in July 1993. Prior to joining The Times, Jefferson was a lecturer and taught American literature, performing arts criticism, writing and English at Columbia University from 1991 until 1993. From 1989 until 1991, and earlier from 1979 until 1983, Jefferson was an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at where she taught critical writing and features. From 1984 until 1989, she was an arts criticism contributing editor at Vogue magazine and a contributing editor to 7 Days magazine from 1988 until 1989. From 1973 until 1978, she was an associate editor at Newsweek magazine. Jefferson has been a contributing critic to Grand Street, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, The Village Voice, Ms., The Soho Weekly News, Dance Ink, Lear’s, Harper’s, Alt, Denmark, and NRC Handelsblad from the Netherlands. In April 1995, Jefferson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Jefferson has also appeared on Ken Burns's Jazz in 2001. She penned the book On Michael Jackson about the American performer published in 2006, and is also working on two books concerning race and culture in America. Born in Chicago, Ill., on October 17, 1947, Jefferson received a B.A. degree, cum laude, in English and American Literature from Brandeis University in 1968. She received an M.S. degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1971. Jefferson now resides lives in New York.

“The Other Obama” By Lauren Collins, The New Yorker

Lauren Collins has worked at The New Yorker since 2003. In 2006, she became the deputy editor of The Talk of the Town. She writes frequently for The Talk of the Town and Tables for Two, and also writes longer features for the magazine. Subjects that Collins has covered include Michelle Obama, a hip-hop furrier, the graffiti artist Banksy, Donatella Versace, the artist Shirin Neshat, and a MySpace hoax that led to a Missouri teen’s suicide. Before arriving at The New Yorker, Collins was at Vogue. Collins is a graduate of Princeton with a degree in English and lives in New York.

Reverend Wright Revisited “Project Trinity” By Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker

Kelefa Sanneh is a journalist and music critic. He joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. Prior to that, he was the pop-music critic for The New York Times, beginning in 2002. Before covering music for the Times, he was the deputy editor of Transition, a journal of race and culture, based at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, at Harvard University. His writing has also appeared in The Source, Rolling Stone, Blender, the Village Voice, Man’s World (―India’s classiest men’s magazine‖), ―Da Capo Best Music Writing‖ in 2002, 2005, and 2007, and newspapers around the world. He was born in Birmingham, England, and spent his early years in Ghana and Scotland. He graduated from Harvard University in 1997 and now lives in Brooklyn.

“Rev. Jeremiah Wright Isn‟t the Problem” By Gary Kamiya, Salon.com

Gary Kamiya is the Executive Editor of Salon.com. Kamiya spent his early childhood in Chicago, where his father was a pioneer in biofeedback research. He attended Yale University and later won the Mark Schorer Citation in English Literature before earning an M.A from UC- Berkeley. He was a former theater critic. He helped launch Frisko, a short-lived San Francisco glossy and wrote occasional pieces for Art Forum and other journals. Kamiya spent three years as senior editor at San Francisco Examiner’s Image Magazine before moving to the Examiner’s Style section where he served as book editor, movie critic and media columnist. In addition to his articles on Salon.com, Kamiya is also a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review. He lives with his wife and son in San Francisco.

United States, Past and Present

“America‟s Greatest Hits” By Lolis Eric Elie, Oxford American http://www.loliselie.com/

Lolis Eric Elie is a metro columnist and accomplished author. His new documentary, Faubourg Treme: the Untold Story of Black New Orleans, chronicles the civil rights movement of the 1800s. Since 1995, he has chronicled the heartbeat of New Orleans’ neighborhoods thrice weekly for New Orleans’ major daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune. He is currently writing Of Bondage & Memory, a book on the enduring legacy of the slave trade on two continents. A recognized expert on New Orleans food and culture, Elie is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country, a book about the culture of barbecue. He produced a television documentary based on that book and has several other culinary documentaries in development. He is editor of Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing for University of North Carolina Press. As a producer for the Smithsonian Institute’s Jazz Oral History Project, Elie conducted interviews with many of New Orleans’ elder jazz musicians. He has master degrees from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York and a Master’s in Creative Writing for the University of Virginia.

“The End of the Black American Narrative” By Charles Johnson, The American Scholar www.oxherdingtale.com

Charles Johnson is the author of four novels: Faith and the Good Thing (1974), Oxherding Tale (1982), Middle Passage (1990), and Dreamer (l998); two collection of short stories: The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1986) and Soulcatcher and Other Stories (2001); a work of aesthetics: Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988); two collections of comic art, Black Humor (1970) and Half-Past Nation Time (1972); Black Men Speaking (1997), co-edited with John McCluskey Jr.; Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery, the companion book for PBS' series (Oct., l998), co-authored with Patricia Smith; and King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., (Viking Studio, 2000), co-authored with Bob Adelman. As a cartoonist and journalist in the early 1970s, he published over 1000 drawings in national publications, a selection of which appears in Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color by John McNally (2002). He has written over 20 screenplays. In l999, Indiana University Press published a collection of his essays on aesthetics, cultural criticism, articles, interviews, speeches, cartoons, out-takes from his novels and book reviews dating back to 1965, entitled I Call Myself an Artist: Writings By and About Charles Johnson (l999), edited by Dr. Rudolph Byrd, with a final section of eight critical articles on his work. He has been featured in many other books and anthologies. Johnson, a Ph.D. in Philosophy, l998 MacArthur fellow and 2002 recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, received the 1990 National Book Award for Middle Passage (he was the first African-American male to win this prize since Ralph Ellison in 1953) as well as many other awards. On May 24, 2000 he received the "Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award" from the Corporate Council for the Arts. In 2003, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; and in 2004 received the Stephen Henderson Award for outstanding contributions to African American literature and culture. He has published 52 reviews in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post as well as other major newspapers in America and England and has published numerous critical articles. Dr. Johnson is one of l2 authors portrayed in a special series of stamps created to honor the most influential black authors of the 20th century. A former director of the creative writing program at the University of Washington, he holds an endowed chair, the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Professorship for Excellence in English and currently teaches fiction.

“In Defense of George Bush” By Jelani Cobb http://www.jelanicobb.com/

William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of History at Spelman College. He specializes in post-Civil War African American history, 20th century American politics and the history of the Cold War. He served as a delegate and historian for the 5th Congressional District at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations. Dr. Cobb is also the author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (2007) which was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing. His collection The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays was also published in 2007. He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader, which was listed as a 2002 Notable Book of The Year by Black Issues Book Review. Born and raised in Queens, NY, attended Howard University where he received his bachelor’s degree and where he received his doctorate in American History in 2003. Dr. Cobb has two forthcoming books: In Our Lifetimes: Barack Obama and the New Black America and a scholarly monograph titled Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931-1957. His articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Essence, Vibe, Emerge, The Progressive, The Washington City Paper, ONE Magazine, Ebony and TheRoot.com. He has contributed to a number of anthologies including In Defense of Mumia, Testimony, Mending the World and Beats, Rhymes and Life. He has also been a featured commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CBS News and a number of other national broadcast outlets. He resides in Atlanta, Ga.

“The End of White America?” By Hua Hsu, The Atlantic

Hua Hsu is an American music critic. He is a frequent contributor to Slate, the New York Sun, Blender, the Village Voice and the Boston Globe Ideas section, as well as a former contributing editor to URB magazine and a columnist at The Wire. He currently teaches in the English Department at Vassar College.

Personalities

“Amy Winehouse and the (Black) Art of Apropriation” By Daphne A. Brooks, The Nation

Daphne A. Brooks is an associate professor of English and African-American studies at Princeton University who specializes in African-American literature and culture, performance studies, cultural studies, and popular music culture. She is the author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke), Jeff Buckley's Grace (Continuum), and The Great Escapes: The Narratives of William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, and William Craft (Barnes and Noble Classics). Brooks is the recipient of the 2007 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American Theater Studies (for Bodies in Dissent). She is also the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement, the U.C. President's post-doctoral fellowship and was a fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. She serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Center of African American Studies.

“„This is How We Lost to the White Man‟” By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic

See Above.

“Before Grief” By Jerald Walker

Jerald Walker is an Assistant Professor of English at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. He attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Teaching/Writing Fellow and James A. Michener Fellow. ―We Are Americans‖ is an excerpt from his memoir, A Place Like This, currently under contract with Random House (Bantam/Dell). Other excerpts have appeared in Best American Essays 2007, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, The North American Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Barcelona Review, and The New Delta Review.

Profiles

“The Other Black President” By Adam Serwer, The American Prospect

“Family Matters” By Henry Louis Gates, The New Yorker

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Gates is Editor-in-Chief of TheRoot.com and the Oxford African American Studies Center. He is co- editor, with K. Anthony Appiah, of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. With Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, he is the co-editor of the eight- volume biographical encyclopedia African American National Biography (2008). His most recent book is In Search of Our Roots (2009), which expands on interviews he conducted for his critically acclaimed multi-part PBS documentary series, ―African American Lives 1 and 2.‖ His most recent documentary is "Looking for Lincoln" (2009), and he is the editor of Lincoln on Race and Slavery (2009). Gates is the author of several books, including The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988), winner of the 1989 American Book Award. Gates authenticated and published two landmark African American texts: Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859), by Harriet Wilson, the first novel published by an African American woman; and The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, one of the first novels written by an African American woman. Gates has written for Time magazine, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is the editor of several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1996). Gates also produced and hosted two previous series for PBS, 1999’s ―Wonders of the African World‖ and 2004’s ―America Beyond the Color Line.‖ Gates earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge, and his B.A. summa cum laude in History from Yale University, where he was a Scholar of the House in 1973. Before joining the faculty of Harvard in 1991, he taught at Yale, Cornell, and Duke. His honors and grants are numerous and include those such as the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor awarded for accomplishments in public television (2009). He has received 50 honorary degrees from all over the nation and world. Professor Gates served as Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard from 1991 to 2006. He serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the Whitney Museum, Lincoln Center Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

“The Purrrfect Diva: Eartha Kitt Had a Tast For the Best Things in Life” By Wil Haygood, The Washington Post

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“Miriam Makeba” By Wil Haygood, The Washington Post

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“Isaac Hayes” By Wil Haygood, The Washington Post

Wil Haygood is a prominent American journalist and author of several best-selling biographies and other works of non-fiction. Haygood was born in 1955 in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Miami University in 1976. He decided to become a journalist. Although he had little formal training, the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette hired him as a copyeditor. Two years later, Haygood accepted a position with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 1984, Haygood became a staff writer at the Boston Globe and as a national and foreign correspondent. He remained with this newspaper for the next seventeen years. In 1991, he became a writer for the Style Section of the Washington Post. Haygood has received numerous awards, including the Sunday Magazine Editors Award, the New England Associated Press Award, and the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Foreign Reporting. Haygood has written several books. These include Two on the River; King of Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.; and The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story.

Excerpt from Pig Candy By Lise Funderburg http://www.lisefunderburg.com/

Lise Funderburg is a writer and editor based in Philadelphia. She studied at Reed College and Columbia University School of Journalism, and her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times; Washington Post; Philadelphia Inquirer; Salon; The Nation; and Prevention. She is the author of Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (2008). Lise’s first book was a prescient collection of oral histories, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity (1994), the first book to explore the lives of adult children of black-white unions. Black, White, Other has become a core text in the study of American multiracial identity, and it is used in college courses around the world. Lise won a 2003 Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers. She has been a regular contributor since 2001 to O, The Oprah Magazine and has written a book about the Tony-winning musical The Color Purple.

Race Talk

“Talking About Not Talking about Race” By Patricia Williams, New York Patricia J. Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University, was born in Boston in 1951 and holds a BA from Wellesley College and a JD from Harvard Law School. She was a fellow in the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College and has been an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School Law School and its department of women's studies. Williams also worked as a consumer advocate in the office of the City Attorney in Los Angeles. A member of the State Bar of California and the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Williams has served on the advisory council for the Medgar Evers Center for Law and Social Justice of the City University of New York and on the board of governors for the Society of American Law Teachers, among others. Her publications include Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave; On Being the Object of Property; The Electronic Transformation of Law; and And We Are Not Married: A Journal of Musings on Legal Language and the Ideology of Style. In 1993, Harvard University Press published Williams's The Alchemy of Race & Rights to widespread critical acclaim. She is also author of The Rooster's Egg (Harvard, 1995), Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (Reith Lectures, 1997) (Noonday Press, 1998) and, most recently, Open House: On Family Food, Friends, Piano Lessons and The Search for a Room of My Own (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2004). She currently writes a monthly column for The Nation magazine titled "Diary of a Mad Law Professor."

“On Black History Month” By Eric Holder http://www.justice.gov/ag/

Eric Holder was sworn in as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States on February 3, 2009 by Vice President Joe Biden. In 1997, Mr. Holder was named by President Clinton to be the Deputy Attorney General, the first African-American named to that post. Prior to that he served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1988, Mr. Holder was nominated by President Reagan to become an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Mr. Holder, a native of New York City, attended Columbia College, majored in American History, and graduated in 1973. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1976. While in law school, he clerked at the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund and the Department of Justice's Criminal Division. Upon graduating, he moved to Washington and joined the Department of Justice as part of the Attorney General's Honors Program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section in 1976 and was tasked to investigate and prosecute official corruption on the local, state and federal levels. Prior to becoming Attorney General, Mr. Holder was a litigation partner at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington. Mr. Holder lives in Washington with his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, a physician, and their three children.

“On Race, Blacks are Cowards, Too” By Bill Maxwell, Tampa Bay Times

Bill Maxwell first joined the Tampa Bay Times in 1994 as an editorial writer. He also wrote a twice-weekly column. In 2004, he left to teach journalism and establish a program at Stillman College in Alabama, but he returned to the Times in August 2006. A native of Fort Lauderdale, Maxwell was reared in a migrant farming family. After a short time in college and the U.S. Marine Corps, he returned to school. During his college years, he worked as an urban organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and wrote for several civil rights publications. He first began teaching college English in 1973 at Kennedy-King College in Chicago and continued to teach for 18 years. Before joining the Times, Maxwell spent six years writing a weekly column for the Gainesville Sun and the New York Times syndicate. Before that, Maxwell was an investigative reporter for the Fort Pierce Tribune in Fort Pierce, where he focused on labor and migrant farm worker affairs.

Excerpt form The Race Card By Richard Thompson Ford

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1994, Professor Richard Thompson Ford was a Reginald F. Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School, a litigation associate with Morrison & Foerster, and a housing policy consultant for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has also been a Commissioner of the San Francisco Housing Authority. He has written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and for Slate, where he is a regular contributor. His latest book is The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.

“Creative Features: A Two Part Invention on Racial Profiling” By Gerald Early

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“The Machine Kills Fascists” By Gerald Early

Gerald Early is the Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Wasdhington University in St. Louis. He is the editor of several volumes, including Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation (1993); My Soul's High Song: The Collected Works of Countee Cullen (1991); Speech and Power (1993); Body Language: Writers on Sport (1998); and The Muhammad Ali Reader (1998). Professor Early is the author of Tuxedo Junction (1989), Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood (1994), One Nation Under a Groove; Motown and American Culture (1994), and The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Early was born in Philadelphia, PA and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974. He eventually earned a doctorate from Cornell University in 1982 after spending time monitoring gang activities through the Crisis Intervention Network in Philadelphia. He now resides in St. Louis with his wife and family.

Sports

“Obama Victory Raises Social Significance of Basketball” By Scoop Jackson, ESPN.com

Robert ―Scoop‖ Jackson joined ESPN in March 2005 and provides written commentary on a weekly basis for both ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. In addition, he appears on ESPN Radio and ESPN TV shows such as Jim Rome Is Burning. Before joining ESPN, Jackson worked as a copy writer and author for Nike in Portland, Ore., from 2001 – 2005, where he helped create ―LeBron James: Chambers of Fear.‖ From 1994 – 2005, he served as executive editor for Harris Publications in New York. Jackson has also spent time as associate editor for Hoop and Inside Stuff, editor at large for Slam, and executive editor for XXL. In addition, he worked as a presenter/analyst on NBA 24/7 and NBA Raw (UK-Ch.4), as a script writer/consultant for MTV Rock ‘N Jock, and as a creative consultant for Battlegrounds (MTV/Nike). Jackson is the author of Sole Provider: Thirty Years of NIKE Basketball (powerHouse Books 2002) and True to the Game (Noble Press 1997). He is the recipient of several awards for his work, including the Peter Lisagor Award for Sports Journalism (1999) and the National Rainbow Coalition Sports Journalist of the Year award (2001). In 2007, he received honorable mention for Best American Sports Writer. Jackson is a Chicago native and graduated from Xavier University in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in mass media and political science. In 1991, he received his masters degree in human communication studies from Howard University.

“Joe Louis Moment” By William C. Rhoden, The New York Times

William C. Rhoden has been writing about sports for The New York Times since March 1983. Previously, he was a copy editor in the Sunday Week in Review section since October 1981 when he joined the newspaper. Before joining The Times, Rhoden spent more than three years with The Baltimore Sun as a columnist. Before that, he was associate editor of Ebony magazine from 1974 to 1978. Rhoden is the author of the controversial Forty Million Dollar Slaves (2006), which compared the relationship of black athletes to team owners and agents to white plantation owners and slaves of the Antebellum period. In 2007, Rhoden's book Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumph of the Black Quarterback was published. This book continues the work of Forty Million Dollar Slaves by discussing the struggles that many black quarterbacks have endured by being labeled as "athletic" and not smart enough to play the position. Rhoden is a frequent guest on ESPN's The Sports Reporters. He attended Morgan State University in Baltimore and while there acted as assistant sports information director. Rhoden is married and has a daughter.

“Still Crazy After All These Years” By L. Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated

L. Jon Wertheim is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. His work has been cited in The Best American Sports Writing anthology four times (2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009) as well as The Best American Crime Writing (2009). He is the author of six highly-praised books: Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played (2009); Blood in the Cage: Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, and the Furious Rise of the UFC (2009); Running the Table: The Legend of Kid Delicious, the Last Great American Pool Hustler (2008); Transition Game: How Hoosiers Went Hip-Hop (2006); Venus Envy: A Sensational Season Inside the Women's Tennis Tour (2001); and The Foul Lines: A Pro Basketball Novel co-written with Jack McCallum (2006). Currently, he and University of Chicago finance professor Tobias Moskowitz are collaborating on book that uses economic principles to explain sports. Wertheim joined Sports Illustrated in 1996. He has written some of the magazine's most memorable pieces including ―Where's Daddy?,‖ a May 1998 cover story about athletes and their out-of-wedlock children, which he co- authored with Grant Wahl. Wertheim has explored wide-ranging subject matters, from high school hazing to performance-enhancing drugs and steroids in sports. He has a weekly column on SI.com entitled Tennis Mailbag. He also speaks about sports business issues on college campuses and for corporate audiences. He is a native of Bloomington, IN, where his late father was a distinguished English professor at Indiana University. Wertheim is 1993 graduate of Yale University and received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He resides in New York City with his wife, son, and daughter.

“Ethical Treatment for a Quarterback” By Phil Talyor, Sports Illustrated

Phil Taylor is a Sports Illustrated senior writer and joined the magazine staff in 1990. Prior to joining SI, Taylor worked as a sports writer and columnist for the Miami Herald, the San Jose Mercury News and the now-defunct sports daily, The National. He writes a regular column, The Hot Button, each Monday for SI.com. He has won many journalism awards, including a 1987 Associated Press Sports Editors Award for Feature Writing. Taylor, a native of Queens, New York, received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College in 1982 and a Masters degree from Stanford University in 1983. He now lives in northern California with his wife and their three children.

Rita Dove

“The Fire This Time” By Rita Dove, Callaloo

Dove was born in Akron, Ohio Dove graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Miami University in 1973 and received her MFA from the University of Iowa in 1977. In 1974 she held a Fulbright Scholarship from Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany. Dove taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and in 1993, at age 40, she was named Poet Laureate of the United States by the Librarian of Congress, an office she held from 1993 to 1995 as the youngest person, and as the first African American under that title (Gwendolyn Brooks had been the last Consultant in Poetry in 1985-86 prior to the name-change and first African American to do so). Rita Dove served as Special Bicentennial Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress in 1999/2000, along with Louise Glück and W. S. Merwin. In 2004 then-governor Mark Warner of Virginia appointed her to a two-year position as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth. Since 1989 she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English. Dove wrote Thomas and Beulah, published in 1986, which was a collection of poems loosely based on the lives of her maternal grandparents. She received the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1987. She has published nine volumes of poetry, a book of short stories (Fifth Sunday, 1985), a collection of essays (The Poet's World, 1995), and a novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992). In 1994 she published a play The Darker Face of the Earth, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon in 1996. Dove's latest collection of poetry, Sonata Mulattica, was published in April 2009. Besides her Pulitzer Prize, she has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them 22 honorary doctorates, the 1996 National Humanities Medal / Charles Frankel Prize, the 3rd Annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities in 1997, and most recently, the 2006 Commonwealth Award of Distinguished Service in Literature, the 2008 Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2009 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal and the 2009 Premio Capri (Italy). From 1994-2000 she was a senator of the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and she is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Dove lives in Charlottesville with her husband. They have one daughter.

“On Rita Dove” By Erika Meitner, Callaloo http://www.erikameitner.com/ Erika Meitner was born and raised in Queens and Long Island, New York. She attended Dartmouth College (for an A.B. in Creative Writing in 1996), Hebrew University on a Reynolds Scholarship, and the University of Virginia, where she received her M.F.A. in 2001 as a Henry Hoyns Fellow. In 2001-2 she was the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and has received additional fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009), the Blue Mountain Center (2006), and the Sewanee Writers' Conference (John N. Wall Fellowship, 2003). Her poems have appeared in publications including The Southern Review; Slate; Prairie Schooner; The Kenyon Review; Mid-American Review; and APR. Her first book, Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, won the 2002 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and was published in 2003. Her second book, Ideal Cities, was selected by Paul Guest as a winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series competition, and will be out in 2010. Her third collection, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls, will be published in 2011. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program, and is also simultaneously completing her doctorate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where she was the Morgenstern Fellow in Jewish Studies, and also served as a member of the Virginia Quarterly Review's Poetry Board.

African American Literature

“Chester Himes” Exile & 125th Street” By Michael A. Gonzales, Noir Originals

Harlem native Michael A. Gonzales is co-author of the groundbreaking music book Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture (Random House, 1991). He has written cover stories for Vibe, Stop Smiling, XXL, The Source and Essence. Gonzales has penned articles and essays for The Vibe History of HipHop (Random House), Vibe HipHop Divas (Random House), Latina, Best Sex Writing 2005 (Cleis Press), Spin, Beats, Rhymes & Life (Harlem Moon) and The Village Voice. In addition, his short fiction has appeared in Trace, Colorlines, OneWorld, Proverbs for the People (Kensington), NY Press, Bronx Biannual (Akashic Books), Nat Creole.com, Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows (Tor Books), Brown Sugar 2: Great One Night Stands (Simon & Shuster) and the UK anthology Tell Tales IV (Peepal Tree Press Ltd). Gonzales also writes for the blogs Riffs & Revolutions.com and Blackadelicpop.com Currently he lives in Brooklyn.

Race , Marriage, and the Law

Multiracialism and the Social Construction of Race: The Story of Hudgins v. Wrights” By Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Race Law Stories

Angela Onwuachi-Willig is Professor of Law and the Charles M. and Marion J. Kierscht Scholar at the University of Iowa. Onwuachi-Willig graduated from Grinnell College, where she majored in American Studies and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. She received her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a Clarence Darrow Scholar, a Note Editor on the Michigan Law Review, and an Associate Editor of the founding issue of the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. After law school, Onwuachi-Willig clerked for the Honorable Solomon Oliver, Jr., United States District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, and the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore, United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also practiced law as a litigation and employment attorney at Jones Day in Cleveland, Ohio, and as an employment attorney with Foley Hoag LLP in Boston, Massachusetts. Onwuachi-Willig joined the University of Iowa College of Law faculty in 2006 after three years on the tenure track at the University of California, Davis School of Law. Her recent publications have appeared in numerous journals, like the Michigan Law Review. She is a writing a book on Rhinelander v. Rhinelander that examines and analyzes its historical and contemporary lessons about how law and society function together to frame the normative ideal of family as monoracial. Onwuachi-Willig has published numerous opinion-editorials in newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune. In the summer of 2008, she received an Obermann Interdisciplinary Grant to complete collaborative research with two sociologists at the University of Iowa; their joint research explores the under-representation of minority—American Indian, Asian Pacific American, African American, and Latina/o— attorneys at both the associate and partnership levels of law firms within the United States. In 2006, Professor Onwuachi-Willig was honored for her service by the Minority Groups Section of the Association of American Law Schools with the Derrick A. Bell Award. Professor Onwuachi-Willig is the Chair of the AALS Minority Groups Section, Chair-Elect of the AALS Law and Humanities Section, and a member of the Society of American Law Teachers ("SALT") Board of Governors.

In Memory: John Hope Franklin

“The Dilemma of the American Negro Scholar” By John Hope Franklin, Race and History: Selected Essays http://jhfc.duke.edu/johnhopefranklin/

John Hope Franklin was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. He was a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University. He has taught at a number of institutions, including Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University, and Howard University. In 1956 he went to Brooklyn College as Chairman of the Department of History; and in 1964, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, serving as Chairman of the Department of History from 1967 to 1970. At Chicago, he was the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor from 1969 to 1982, when he became Professor Emeritus. Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Ante-bellum North. Perhaps his best known book is From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African- Americans, now in its seventh edition. His Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 1976 was published in 1985 and received the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize for that year. In 1990, a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of fifty years, was published under the title, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988. In 1993, he published The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century. Franklin's most recent book, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, is an autobiography of his father. His research at the time of his death dealt with "Dissidents on the Plantation: Runaway Slaves." Franklin served on the editorial board of the Journal of Negro History. He also served as President of the following organizations: The American Studies Association (1967), the Southern Historical Association (1970), the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa (1973-76), the Organization of American Historians (1975), and the American Historical Association (1979). He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Fisk University, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. Franklin served on many national commissions and delegations, including the National Council on the Humanities, from which he resigned in 1979, when the President appointed him to the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He also served on the President's Advisory Commission on Ambassadorial Appointments. In September and October of 1980, he was a United States delegate to the 21st General Conference of UNESCO. Among many other foreign assignments, Franklin served as Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, Consultant on American Education in the Soviet Union, Fulbright Professor in Australia, and Lecturer in American History in the People' Republic of China. Franklin was the recipient of many honors. In 1978, he was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. He also received the Jefferson Medal for 1984, awarded by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. In 1989, he was the first recipient of the Cleanth Brooks Medal of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and in 1990 received the Encyclopedia Britannica Gold Medal for the Dissemination of Knowledge. In 1993, Dr. Franklin received the Charles Frankel Prize for contributions to the humanities, and in 1994, the Cosmos Club Award and the Trumpet Award from Turner Broadcasting Corporation. In 1995, he received the first W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Fisk University Alumni Association, the Organization of American Historians' Award for Outstanding Achievement, the Alpha Phi Alpha Award of Merit, the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1996, Franklin was elected to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Frame and in 1997 he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. In addition to his many awards, Dr. Franklin has received honorary degrees from more than one hundred colleges and universities. Franklin has been extensively written about in various articles and books. Most recently he was the subject of the film First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin. The documentary was featured on PBS in June 1997. Franklin died on the morning of March 25th, 2009.