Author: revsekou
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The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks
The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks + Beacon Press + 303 pages “A tired seamstress” is how we remember Rosa Parks in our national imagination. Accordingly the tired seamstress was not a troublemaker just a simple woman who in a single act of defiance launched the modern civil rights movement. The political history of Rosa…
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Cody Chesnutt, Old Soul
Huddled in the basement with a 4-track cassette recorder, an eccentric youngish soul singer laid a critically acclaimed double cd, The Headphone Master Piece. Through the album sold poorly it was a critical success. Cited for its low-fi grittiness and biting social commentary, “Headphone Masterpiece” caused industry insiders to take notice. Cody Chesnutt’s genius status…
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Bob Marley, Soul Rebel
“Live if you want to live / That’s what we got to give,” were the first lines sung by Bob Marley at the Amandla Festival held at the Harvard Coliseum some 34 years ago in 1979. Marley’s plea for life eternally resonates in the minds and hearts of all his listeners, which is exactly why…
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James Baldwin: A Prophet in Exile
Millions of African-Americans migrated from the Jim Crow South in search of a better life. The North represented The Promised Land—free of the limits on Black mobility and opportunity so rampant in the southern states. In Notes of a Native Son, America’s greatest essayist, James Baldwin recalls there was no milk and honey to be…
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Bayard Rustin: Are Gay Rights the New Civil Rights?
Bayard Rustin was an openly gay black man, helped introduce Gandhian nonviolence to the African-American civil rights movement. His pacifism landed him in jail for refusing to participate in World War II. He was part of the first Freedom Rides in 1947, helped to found the Congress for Racial Equality, and was National Field Secretary…
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Tito Jackson Making History
Spare Change News: Tell me about your childhood. Councilman Tito Jackson: Unlike my older siblings, I like to remind them that I was actually chosen. I was adopted when I was two months old. I stayed in the hospital for about two months and I’m thankful so much for Herbert and Rosa Jackson, they’re my…
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A Conversation with Noam Chomsky
On January 8, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Spare Change News' editor-in-chief, sat down with one of the world’s leading public intellectuals, Prof. Noam Chomsky, in his office at MIT. They had a wide-ranging and free-flowing conversation about the most pressing issues facing our democracy. They covered topics ranging from liberation theology in Latin America, to…
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Book Review: Martin's Dream by Clayborne Carson
Martin’s Dream: My Journey and the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by Clayborne Carson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 304 pages. $27. The intellectual property of Dr. King has been subject to much controversy over the last two decades. The discovery of his apparent plagiarism in his dissertation and other academic writing shocked the public,…
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A Mighty Stream: The Faith of Martin Luther King Jr.
“Darling I miss you so much. In fact, much to much for my own good. I never realized that you were such an intimate part of my life”, writes a young graduate student, Martin Luther King, Jr. to his love interest, Coretta Scott. They are separated for a few months because King had gone home…
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Letter from the Editor
The life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. looms large in our nation. As we approach the 50th anniversary of his landmark speech at the March on Washington, surely, books, documentaries, and other wares will extoll the virtue of this great man. The risk and violence of the era in which he…