Tag: black civilization
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Karenge Ya Marenge (Do or Die) by Countee Cullen
Dark Rapture, Beauford Delaney Wherein are words sublime or noble? What Invests one speech with haloed eminence, Makes it the sesame for all doors shut, Yet in its like sees but impertinence? Is it the hue? Is it the cast of eye, The curve of lip or Asiatic breath, Which mark a lesser place for […]
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The Indian Press Defended Paul Robeson in 1947
As revolutionary India entered the world stage as a free nation in 1947, The Hindu, a widely read Indian newspaper, condemned the banning of Paul Robeson’s public performance in Peoria, Illinois as a consequence for his agitation for world peace and the freedom of oppressed peoples everywhere. “If Paul Robeson is un-American, so much the […]
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W.E.B Du Bois, The Hands Of Ethiopia
Here are the beginnings of a modern industrial system: iron and steel for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor […]
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The Garland March: From Selma to Montgomery, 1965
The flash and flutter of a lens can capture a moment in eternity. In the photograph below, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., second from left, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, second from right, wear garlands in the Hindu tradition. It is 1965 and they are marching from Selma to Montgomery. I am unsure which of […]
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The Thurman Delegation in India, 1935-1936
Sue Bailey Thurman and Howard Thurman travelled to India, Burma and Ceylon, as part of the first African-American delegation to colonial India in 1935-1936, at the height of its anti-colonial struggle against the British Empire. Known as the Pilgrimage of Friendship to the East, the delegation was organized by the Student Christian Movement in the […]
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The Star Of Ethiopia
In 1913, Du Bois wrote and presented The Star Of Ethiopia, a historical pageant chronicling the history of black civilization and its contribution to world history at the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in New York City. In many ways, the play is an early enactment of the story he so painstakingly documents in […]
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Asia in Africa
In the ninth chapter of his 1946 inquiry The World and Africa, which explores the role played by Africa in the ancient and modern world, W.E.B Du Bois theorizes the black foundations of Asiatic civilization, citing as evidence the African origins of the name “Nahsi” and the black features of the Buddha and Krishna, two […]
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Universal Consciousness: Alice Coltrane’s Turn To Hinduism
You have your own conscience, your own intelligence, and you know your own mind. –Alice Turiyasangitananda Coltrane A portrait of Alice Coltrane, R. Divya Nair In this clip, Turiya Coltrane, the grand-daughter of jazz pianist, harpist, and vocalist Alice Coltrane (née McCleod) reflects on her grandmother’s study and interpretation of Hindu philosophy through the gospel […]
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