Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Harlem Renaissance Notebook for National History Day and Black History Month

2/1/2016

1984 USPS Black Heritage Series stamp featuring Carter G. Woodson, often referred to as "the father of Black history." (stamp portrait art by Jerry Pinckney)

The Harlem Renaissance has long been a favorite subject of discussion and exploration during Black History Month. One of the reasons that make a lot of sense is because the observations of African-American history first proposed by historian Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950) were started during the Harlem Renaissance. In more recent years, the celebrated era has also become a popular topic for students and teachers participating in National History Day.

Now also known as a nonprofit organization, National History Day (NHD) got its start when the late historian David Van Tassel (1928-2000) established History Day in 1974 at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Prof. Tassel’s hope at the time was to provide a corrective response “to numerous reports focusing on the decline in scholarship and inadequate teaching in American school systems. At that time, History Day was only a pilot project involving 129 secondary school students in the Greater Cleveland area” (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History).

The initiative since then has grown to engage participants on an international scale:

“Today, in every state, the District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, and international affiliates in several countries, NHD contestants become writers, filmmakers, playwrights, web designers, and artists as they create unique, contemporary expressions of history.”
––(NHD: A Personal Message from Cathy Gorn, Executive Director)

Educator and historian David Van Tassel, founder of National History Day. (photo courtesy Case Western Reserve University)

The theme for the 2016 National History Day is one particularly suitable as a lens through which to view the Harlem Renaissance: Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange in History.

A Digital Notebook

Commentators are accurate when they point out that documentation of these different aspects of the movement got off to a good start with the publication of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File/Infobase Publishing) in 2003). However, quite a few articles since then by this author (as well as others, many of which are currently available to read online free of charge) have expanded on that original contribution to affirm the Renaissance’s relevance to studies of contemporary history, cultural diversity, and the cultural arts. Taken together, these works comprise a digital notebook on the Harlem Renaissance. The following sections link to articles and essays which observers of National History Day and Black History Month might find useful:

The Global Scope (2015)

Please note: Paris, France, along with cities like London and Rome, was one of the most important international outposts of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance Dialogues Series
(February 2010)

Original Introductory Essays On the Harlem Renaissance Centennial (2011-2013)

Text and Meaning Series (2013-2015)

Aberjhani
© February 1, 2016
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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For Love of Paris and a More Compassionate World (Part 2)

11/21/2015

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"This fire that we call loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls." Aberjhani (from ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love. Poster art by FamilyShare.com)

You can enjoy part 1 of this article by clicking here. Part 2 begins now:

Impressive 21st-century technological advances notwithstanding, we have no reasons at present believe our modern global version of the Tower of Babel is about to crumble and then reconstruct itself any time soon. Terrorists, warlords, and state governments alike would do best to include within their strategic plans sufficient measures of sanity beyond the impulses to attempt to coerce each other into unlikely forms of submission.

Different values and worldviews do not have to mean inevitable violence or conflict. They can mean greater enrichment of each other’s lives. Leadership theorist Max De Pree wrote as truthfully as anyone has when he stated:

“We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion” (Leadership is an Art).

That holds true in modern times whether you propose to be a leader of young malleable individuals eager to become catalysts for positive change or of more established groups dedicated to securing a specific legacy. What matters, above all else, is that everybody matters.

Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all. The situation would be quite different if the violent extremism which has come to characterize anarchistic terrorism and government-sanctioned warfare actually resolved anything. The problem is they do not. Advances are claimed on one front and then annihilation––physical, mental, and spiritual–– witnessed on another. Global poverty, dis-empowering illiteracy, health crises, and human trafficking linger like the ultimate toxic nuclear radiation. The hearts of infants beat their last, blood dries on abandoned corpses, and souls take their leave of now useless broken bones.

Of Love and Bridges

The 13th-century Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi, whose poetry in Persian has been translated into superb English versions by the 21st-century American poet Coleman Barks, told us that “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” Those are marvelous words to contemplate when struggling to make sense of the avoidable carnage in Paris, Syria, Nigeria, Mali, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Equally marvelous to contemplate is the confluence of sensibilities that has bypassed time, space, and nationality to make Barks’ name virtually synonymous with that of Rumi’s.

Paris in particular is known in part for its many bridges and is legendary as a place that evokes mesmerizing creative expressions of love, in both the greatest of artists and the most ordinary men and women. However, if the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the likelihood that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.

Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences common to all human beings. What civilization does not contain within its histories tales of sons, daughters, husbands, and wives who have been lost to conflict, and whose deaths left gaping voids that could be filled with nothing but grief? In what land do people not hope that the coming New Year will bring with it fewer reasons to bow before fear or despair and greater inspiration applied to an empowered sense of hope and dignity? The more healing options do not have to be dragged into a disposal bin designed for unrealistic dreams and desires.

A Messy and Complicated Concept

The four letters that spell out the word “love”––or five (amour) in French, seven (Кохання) in Ukrainian, or six (upendo) in Swahili–– can indeed add up to a messy and complicated concept. Nevertheless, whatever danger it (love, amour, Кохання, upendo) might pose to human existence is far less fatal than strapping bombs next to one’s heart as if they were newly-earned wings. Nor is it more lethally addictive than the apparent rush that comes from investing billions in war machines and prisons instead of committing the same to much-needed medical research and education programs.

These children are eating in poverty-stricken Mali, Africa, where terrorists killed 19 people at a hotel just one week following attacks in Paris, France. (photo from UN Word Food Bank Organization and Daouda Guirou 06-2014)

Consider that pain and bewilderment at some point in the course of individual lives knocks people sobbing to their wretched knees no matter where those lives may have originated. Consider that universal agonies, common challenges, and simple human dignity make each of us worthy of some degree of compassion.

Imagine that the strength and resources which may be claimed through communication and reconciliation are far greater and much more sustainable than any likely to come from ignoring everything that binds the fate of one to that of another. The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything. It can heal a wounded city like Paris or restore humankind’s faith in what is best within us all.

Aberjhani
@ 20 November 20, 2015
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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When the Lyrical Muse Sings the Creative Pen Dances

9/20/2015

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Article art graphic featuring black & white images of musician Nina Simone, Sonny Rollins, author Pat Conroy, author & editor Susan L. Taylor, King of Pop Michael, poet & educator Ja A. Jahannes, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, actor Danny Glover, artist Luther E. Vann, and more. (Bright Skylark Literary Productions)

If you’re a regular reader of my national African-American cultural arts column, you may have noticed that I have not been posting articles as frequently as I once did. The reason is simple enough. Having reached a certain point in the research for my current book-in-progress (at least one of them anyway) I had to reduce as many additional writing obligations as possible to fully concentrate on completion of the work.

For me, this is the part of authorship when the lyrical muse sings and the creative pen dances. The greater bulk of the more rigid tasks of verification and documentation have been satisfied, and imagination may be allowed to take over the processes of narrative construction. The resulting musical flow of image and language stamp the work with its own unique identity. And its own self-defined meanings destined to merge with different readers’ interpretations of the same.

The Writer and the Times

I started the national African-American cultural arts column on July 13, 2009, with a story about the debut of Johnny and Me, Savannah author Miriam K. Center’s play based on her friendship with the late 4-time Academy Award-winning composer Johnny Mercer. That was followed by a profile of acclaimed artist Jerome Meadows. The next month, August, saw the launch of the controversial series on the trial (and eventual execution) of Troy Anthony Davis, convicted for the murder of Savannah policeman Mark Allen MacPhail. Not writing about Davis’s trial, to my mind, would have been a case of gross negligence. Doing so was one early indication of what readers would discover over the next few years: basically, I found it impossible to restrict myself (as asked to do) to the subject of “the arts” as pertaining to African Americans.

How could that have been likely for someone who had already chronicled the global multicultural impact of the Harlem Renaissance in the pages of an encyclopedia, and whose first novel featured a cast of post-Millennials on a parallel Earth? I could no more refrain from engaging political discourse within a column bearing my name than Zora Neale Hurston could have resisted writing black dialect or Franz Kafka could have ignored the absurdities of his existential dilemmas.

Collage of images from the National African-American Art Examiner pages. See here are: King of Pop Michael Jackson, the African-American Family Monument in Savannah, Georgia, author Octavia Butler, slain officer Mark Allen MacPhail, artist Jerome Meadow, author John Lennon, executed Savannahian Troy Anthony Davis, and others.

Moreover, how could it even have been possible in the era that saw such titanic events as these: the two-term presidency of Barack H. Obama, America’s first African-American commander-in-chief, the domino effect of the Arab Spring in 2011, the death of a global pop icon like Michael Joseph Jackson in 2009, the advent of civil war in Syria with its subsequent refugee and migrant crisis, the heart-rending terror of Boko Haram and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the astonishing triumphs of the Marriage Equality Movement, massive shifts in population demographics, and the end of diplomatic estrangement between Cuba and the United States. Just to name a few.

This is not, of course, to say that during the same period I considered the cultural arts any less important than national or international politics. It has been more than thrilling to share with readers through this specific platform essays on such topics as: the poetry of Elizabeth Alexander, the life and legacy of Maya Angelou, the novels and ever-increasing relevance of Toni Morrison, reports on winners of the Nobel Prize, the enduring literary vision of James Baldwin, the annual global triumph of International Jazz Day, profiles of Kennedy Center honorees, and reviews of some of the most important films of our modern times.

Framing the 21st Century with Interpretive Journalism

I also took the liberty of expanding the parameters of the column to introduce a number of analytical concepts particularly applicable to the 21st century. These included several running series that provided in-depth explorations of captivating issues.

When it came to political events and social developments, I named my style of coverage interpretive journalism for its combination of original news reportage and editorial commentary––sometimes presented with poetry. Emerging facts, such as those regarding the 7 children and 20 adults murdered by 20-year-old Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School (and in the home he shared with his mother) in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 could send recipients of such news reeling for years with shock and disbelief. It was the potential significance behind the facts that I chose to communicate to readers and which I hoped they found useful.

Indeed, much of this century’s first decade and a half has been comprised of trends and unforeseen progressions that basically trashed reality as humanity knew it and reconstructed it via the mechanisms of a technology-based revolution. No sphere of endeavor––whether in classrooms and boardrooms, or on football fields and battlefields––was left unchanged. Some of my stronger attempts to bring usable meaning to those historical changes took the form of the following long-term projects:

100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance
Annual Black History Month Notebook
Guerrilla Decontextualization
Abbreviated Mind Syndrome
The Michael Jackson Legacy Files
Savannah Talks Troy Anthony Davis
The Text and Meaning Series

Each of these broke new ground more because history itself demanded it than because of any desire on my part to prove myself a savvy wordsmith. Are they likely to emerge again once the current book is completed? The possibility is a very real one. But which venue they will occupy or what form they will take, for the moment, is an open question. A couple of them have long been tagged for eventual development and publication as books.

More certain than anything else at this time is my commitment to completing the work at hand. It has patiently awaited my full attention for several years and the time has come to honor our faith in each other.

Aberjhani
© 20 September, 2015

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The Wit, Wisdom, and Genius of Ja A. Jahannes

7/23/2015

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The late great Dr. Ja A. Jahannes (right) with Aberjhani signing copies of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance at Barnes & Noble in October 2003.

Wisdom Quote by Ja A. Jahannes: “…We are here to continue the perfectibility of humankind. It doesn’t matter where we come from, what is important is what we do.” (Quote art graphic copyright by Aberjhani)

Any attempt to write a biographical essay about someone as multi-talented and prolific as the late Ja A. Jahannes would be incomplete without immersion––or re-immersion––into a comprehensive sample of his works. In Jahannes’ case that would mean listening to diverse genres of music, going through numerous powerful poems, revisiting provocative essays, and revisiting intensely-original memoirs, novels, and plays.

Getting it all done in the short amount of time allotted by deadlines would not be possible but enjoying the challenge would be. In the course of rising to meet that challenge by penning the essay 5 Ways to be Geniuses Together, Celebrating Ja Jahannes, I naturally looked for suitable quotes to include with the essay. Upon finding more than I could use, I was inspired to create the three quotation graphics posted with the article.

From that point, it wasn’t much of a leap to realize that our modern shell-shocked world could possibly benefit tremendously from a collection of quips and witticisms distilled from the glittering torrent of fiction, sermons, librettos, stories, papers, etc., that seemed to flow with such ceaseless determination from Jahannes’ inspired soul. A good title for the collection might be The Wit, Wisdom, and Genius of Ja A. Jahannes. Moreover, if I were a traditional publisher taking on such a project I would push for both an illustrated hardback edition and a primarily text paperback edition.

The Notion of Being Geniuses Together

The first part of the 5 Ways to be Geniuses Together essay contains a short discussion on my allusion to the notion of collective genius. Specifically, I identity the following as a central theme binding the larger body of multi-discipline works by Jahannes:

Being geniuses together (to borrow the phrase from Kay Boyle’s and Robert McAlmon’s classic memoir) makes it possible for human beings to serve as each other’s heroes rather than simply function as each other’s antagonistic nemeses. (from 5 Ways to be Geniuses Together)

I was fortunate enough to experience Jahannes’ application of that concept through a number of shared projects. We first met when he visited a Waldenbooks store I managed in the Savannah Mall (Savannah, Georgia) during the early 1990s. His careful study of the New York Times bestselling titles on the shelves and the sustained attention he gave to the African-American Studies section told me he was someone of rare intellectual sensibilities. I was not offended when he gently waved me away after I offered my assistance but let him know I was there if he should need it.

The Black Writers Project: Something Magical

Autographed 1996 Savannah Writers Workshop poster for 4 Native Voices featuring dramatizations of the lives of Ja A. Jahannes, Flannery O'Connor, Conrad Aiken, and Rosemary Daniell. Original art by David R.C. Oster.

The first time we actually worked together on a cultural arts project was probably in 1996 when he was one of the authors profiled in the stage production debut of 4 Native Voices. The play was produced by the Savannah Writers Workshop, with which I worked for a decade to help produce literary events and co-edit the Savannah Literary Journal. The next year his long poem “Communion,” dedicated to photographer Roland L. Freeman, was published in the Journal.

In 1998, 4 Native Voices was revived for the first Savannah Literary Festival, coordinated by Miriam K. Center. As part of that same festival, Jahannes joined Word Sculptor Iris Formey Dawson and me as part of a panel discussion on “Southern People of Color Write about the South.” With our more formal introduction via 4 Native Voices and the literary festival behind us, I accepted invitations in 1999 to join him, author Michael Porter, and Formey Dawson at different venues to share our individual brands of poetry with the community. Jahannes named “our little group” The Black Writers Project.

The group might not have been as large or dynamic as the throngs of authors, poets, painters, and musicians who flooded New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, but as black literary artists sharing our works in public spaces we were doing something new. We were helping create what eventually would evolve into the modern spoken word movement.

One of the group’s first assignments was undertaken in March when we joined him at Abyssinia Baptist Church where he served as pastor. For another, we went to the Hitch Village Library and read to a group of excited children. Jahannes knew I had lived in Hitch Village myself until the age of 10 and had often spent time reading and playing in that very same library. He therefore introduced me as one of their own who was now a bookseller and a writer who had returned to them after having lived and written in other parts of the world.

Something magical happened when I passed out copies of a poem called Black Then as I Am Black Now so the children would be able to follow along as I read. I had written it specifically for the occasion to emphasize that being black meant more than the reports about gun violence and drug-busts taking place in their neighborhood and which they saw on the news almost every evening. Halfway through the poem, they picked up on one particular phrase and turned it into a repeating refrain after each remaining stanza:

“…I was black back then
just as I am black right now..”

Wisdom quote by Ja A. Jahannes: "Unless we learn to know ourselves, we run the danger of destroying ourselves." (Quotation art graphic copyright July 2015 by Aberjhani)

They had added their genius for rhythm to the poem and made it their own. Each time they repeated the lines following my recital of a new stanza I was nearly overcome with emotion. That kind of transference of creative catalyst from one generation to another gave meaning to a way of being geniuses together that Jahannes seemed to appreciate the most. He was, after all, an exceptional educator who made it his mission to not only inform young people but empower them. In this instance, the children had given me as much through their voices as I had hoped to give them through mine.

Further Adventures in Literary Savannah

Edited by Patrick Allen, the Literary Savannah anthology showcased writing by contemporary and historical authors, including Aberjhani and Ja A. Jahannes.

Our shared adventures in 1998 continued with the publication of Hill Street Press’ Literary Savannah. By including Jahannes’ poem, “The Death of Tomochichi,” and my own, “Return to Savannah,” in the anthology, our names joined the distinguished company of some of the most influential individuals to ever pass through, reside in, or comment on “the immortal city”: Conrad Aiken, Olaudah Equino, Juliette Gordon Low, Julien Green, Flannery O’Connor, James Alan McPherson, William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Washington, and dozens more.

If Literary Savannah linked both our names to the city’s literary history, a few years later our work became part of an even more expansive cultural legacy when I co-authored Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance and had the honor of including Jahannes’ poem, “Black Voices Rising,” as an epigraph for the volume. He graciously joined me for the book-signing when the encyclopedia made its Savannah debut in October 2003.

One of the reasons I treasured his input and influence where my works were concerned was because I knew the demands upon his time were great. In addition to being a devoted family man, an educator who made himself as accessible to students as possible, and a pastor who did the same for congregants, he responded to numerous requests to speak or lecture in different cities and countries. It almost seemed flat-out wrong to ever ask anything at all of him outside those specific contexts.

But then news came that the book, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (with Luther E. Vann), would be published in 2008 and made the subject of a program at the Jepson Center for the Arts. Who could possibly be more appropriate than Jahannes to give a short presentation on the cultural significance of the book? When introducing him, the program moderator pointed out the eclectic assemblage of titles––professor, minister, photographer, playwright, etc.––assigned to the good doctor and pointed out, “You don’t often hear those words together in a single sentence describing a single individual.” The thunderous applause of the audience following Jahannes’ talk indicated I had made the right choice.

A Much Brighter Light

We did not support each other’s work and projects simply because we had become friends. We did it because we believed our works communicated values and insights greater than our individual desires or biases. That was one reason two of his last most important books––WordSong Poets and Black Gold, An Anthology of Black Poetry, shined a much brighter light on his peers than on himself.

Being a genius, as it were, did not mean constantly reminding the world of how brilliant he was. It meant reminding the world how extraordinary people in general can be when we avoid the pitfalls of petty chauvinism and stand together on the solid ground of our common humanity. It meant holding each other accountable for contributing just a little more joy, beauty, and sanity to the world before taking our leave of it––which is precisely what he did. It meant being geniuses together.

Aberjhani
© July 2015

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Citizens of Newark Honor City, and, City Historian Clement Alexander Price

12/8/2014

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“Everything he touched he made better'.” --Historian Lonnie Bunch.

The brilliant and much-celebrated Dr. Clement Alexander Price inside the Newark Library. (photo by Nick Romanenko and Rutgers Magazine)

The celebration held at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, NJ, on November 14, 2014, honored the city itself as much as it did the life of historian Clement Alexander Price, who passed on November 5.

Political leaders such as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (D–N.J.) expressed similar observations about the great educator following his death. So did members of the community at Rutgers University where he taught, fellow associates on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, administrators at the Smithsonian Institute, and those at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A Prodigiously Productive Life

Dr. Price’s exhaustive list of accomplishments includes co-founding (with the late Giles R. Wright) the Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series in 1981, taking on the directorship of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, chairing the New Jersey State Council on the Arts from 1980 to 1983, and authoring some four books on different aspects of American and African-culture, including Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey (1980). Despite his own demanding schedule and prodigious output, as various speakers at his funeral service attested, Price somehow made time to accommodate requests from those who needed some fragment of his genius to lend weightier substance and dignity to their specific projects. Along those lines, he contributed a foreword to Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File), and an essay to the book Small Towns, Black Lives: African American Communities in Southern New Jersey (Noyes Museum of Art), both published in 2003. On behalf of the citizens of his beloved Newark, he accepted the title of City Historian near the beginning of 2014. In an official entry into the U.S. Senate record, Sen. Booker noted Price’s capacity for giving to others as well as his dedication to Newark:

“…He served not only as our leading historian, but as a powerful spiritual force in our state’s largest city. He was invested in Newark, and – ever generous with his time - was known to arrange tours for visitors that highlighted not only the city’s rich history, but its considerable promise. Clem always recognized the vital truth that charting a brighter course for the future requires a comprehensive understanding of the past.”

Among the most compelling commentators at the service for Price was Mayor Ras Baraka, whose impassioned poetic delivery evoked memories of his poet-playwright father, the late Amiri Baraka. Mayor Baraka credited Price with helping to shape his political and social vision of Newark:

“…Newark is one of America’s oldest metropolises that wears the scars of Western democracy all over her face, tragically beautiful, complex and proud. If you stop on our streets for a second and listen, you can hear Clem’s voice, beckoning us, forcing us all to deal with each other.”

Moreover, in his official statement as mayor following the announcement of Price’s death, Baraka announced the following:

“…Our celebrations of Newark’s 350th Anniversary in 2016 will be a tribute to his love of Newark and his vision of its greatness as our nation’s third-oldest city. He defined the transformation we are making to turn Newark into a City we can all believe in.”

Clement Alexander Price in Newark. (photo by Jim Pathe for The Star Ledger)

The acknowledgements of Clement Price’s highly-prized singular genius for intellectual scholarship and down-to-earth compassion were so deeply compelling––drawing tears and laughter alike––that one is left wondering why more of the world did not share in more of him. Possibly that would have spoiled the unique pure-gold rarity of his academic and spiritual gifts. Possibly it would have removed him too far from the reach of those whom Pastor Moses William Howard referred to as the “little Clement Prices” that God will send and “who will usher us into this city’s great future.”

Words Sung, Spoken, and Written

The song “There is a Balm in Gilead” sung in his honor by the powerful baritone Kevin Maynor, and Norman Lewis’ brilliant rendition of “Oh What a Beautiful City” were perfectly executed double salutes that could have referred as easily to the historian’s release from the physical world as they could have to the vision of Newark’s rebirth viewed by many as the centerpiece of his legacy.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s description of Price as “a speaker of grace and a narrator of hope,” historian Lonnie Bunch quoting his mother’s declaration of him as “the patron saint of Newark,” student Andrea Barton Reeves acknowledgement of her “beloved teacher… a man of immeasurable integrity,” Price’s cousin Randall Kennedy’s description of him as “a cultivator of grace,” and the words of numerous others combined to produce something rarely seen publicly in America in the year 2014.

Their spoken and written words offered as tribute to Dr. Price produced a portrait of a black man who had been unreservedly cherished for the contents of his character and the balanced weight of his once-living presence on Earth. The contrast was a brutally stark one compared to the images and implications that followed the deaths of so many black men in America in 2014. Whereas the tears shed for numerous others this year have been from inconsolable aggravated grief and political outrage, those wept for Clement Alexander Price were clearly tears of joy and gratitude.

by Aberjhani

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Harlem Renaissance Notebook for National History Day and Black History Month

A Digital Notebook

The Global Scope (2015)

The Harlem Renaissance Dialogues Series
(February 2010)

Original Introductory Essays On the Harlem Renaissance Centennial (2011-2013)

Text and Meaning Series (2013-2015)

For Love of Paris and a More Compassionate World (Part 2)

Of Love and Bridges

A Messy and Complicated Concept

When the Lyrical Muse Sings the Creative Pen Dances

The Writer and the Times

Framing the 21st Century with Interpretive Journalism

The Wit, Wisdom, and Genius of Ja A. Jahannes

The Notion of Being Geniuses Together

The Black Writers Project: Something Magical

Further Adventures in Literary Savannah

A Much Brighter Light

Citizens of Newark Honor City, and, City Historian Clement Alexander Price

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Harlem Renaissance Notebook for National History Day and Black History Month

A Digital Notebook

The Global Scope (2015)

The Harlem Renaissance Dialogues Series(February 2010)

Original Introductory Essays On the Harlem Renaissance Centennial (2011-2013)

Text and Meaning Series (2013-2015)

For Love of Paris and a More Compassionate World (Part 2)

Of Love and Bridges

A Messy and Complicated Concept

When the Lyrical Muse Sings the Creative Pen Dances

The Writer and the Times

Framing the 21st Century with Interpretive Journalism

The Wit, Wisdom, and Genius of Ja A. Jahannes

The Notion of Being Geniuses Together

The Black Writers Project: Something Magical

Further Adventures in Literary Savannah

A Much Brighter Light

Citizens of Newark Honor City, and, City Historian Clement Alexander Price

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

The Harlem Renaissance Dialogues Series
(February 2010)