The Colored Musicians Club Museum is housed in the building. Named for a self-anointed 'colored' wing of the Musicians Local in 1917 by blacks whose participation had been rejected by Musicians Local 533, it was incorporated in 1935. The Colored Musicians Union morphed in the Colored Musicians Club, a place where black musicians gathered to practice and jam, to share information about gigs, musical trends, and lend each other communal support.

Honestly, the term guests would be an overstatement. We are treated as servants in their houses. Lord Jamar, whose feud with Eminem is well chronicled, stated that Eminem is a guest in the house of Hip Hop. He’s saying that all “White folk who participate in Hip Hop are guests in the “Culture”

In the late 1890s, John Sanford Perry Hughes struck oil on land he owned in Oklahoma. After leasing the land, he moved to Los Angeles, where he became a successful real estate speculator. In addition to being a prominent businessman, Hughes was also the favorite uncle of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.

. However, there is a group of black folk, that truly would be considered Black American, or even American Black that is rarely mentioned in the celebration of Black History Month. They are called “The Copper Colored People.” According to the American Dictionary of English, also referred to as Webster’s Dictionary 1828, the “Native American,” also called “Indians” were as described - “AMER'ICAN, noun A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper-colored races, found here by the Europeans

Dinner has always been a festive event in both sides of my family for generations. There are times during the week, as I grew up, where dinner wasn’t filled with the laughter and banter of many relatives. However, on any given Friday through Sunday, it is very likely that all the family would come together to eat what is now called “Soul or Southern Food,” laugh, joke and catchup with one another.

Stuck in a different world away from the truth, and confused about why people treat you the way they do. James, a teen from a small town called Point Place in Wisconsin was living in that world, stuck in an alternate universe. At the outset of our story, James was a strong young man, given his home life, James struggled a little bit because his mom was a single parent raising two kids.

There are many ways to express and preserve culture and traditions. Some convey it through literature, some through spoken word, and others through the various arts, ei—painting, music, performance, and dance. Jackie Merritt uses the arts to tell the story of the blues people. The art of painting, singer/songwriting, and performance. Merritt is a cultural bearer extraordinaire whose roots in painting and the love of acoustic guitar galvanized her on a journey to becoming one of the premier Black Traditional Music practitioners who works to make sure the people of the music and experience live.

The Blues and Hip Hop constitutes over one hundred years of black expression. They are both oral and aural documentation of the black experience in the Americas. Furthermore, the expression is unique and specifically formulated as a response to black in America. According to Louisiana native and blues legend Chris Thomas King, 'Blues' was created in New Orleans.

There are many songs used to engage children by parents and teachers. Some are nursery rhymes, and some are jingles for popular kids' products. We all know and love them. However, most have no idea the racist origins of these tunes that became a stamp in households, schools, and communities. This essay will discuss two of the most popular songs. 

‘Clean Getaway’ is a chapter book by Nic Stone.  The story is about a boy named William “Scoob” Lamar and his G’ma traveling across America in 2018 to finish a trip G’ma tried to take when she was younger, but never finished.

Some think Anime and the average cartoon are the same things. However, there is a difference. Cartoons are produced for humor, featuring caricatures created for satire, where Anime focuses on life issues, human emotions, sex, and violence. The first cartoon was released to the public on August 17, 1908

It is the middle of a Sunday afternoon when I finally connect with Teeny Tucker, a woman born into blues royalty whose made a lane all her own. She is all blues, all the time. A blues songstress and a songwriter who is as much of a blues historian as she is a blues activist.

Miss Mae daydreams in the summer breeze
of some yesterdays long  ago although
they seem as clear today as one of those tv's;
 pretty mens with their perfume and powder


When Ma Rainey Comes to town,

Much has been said about the influence exerted upon white mainstream culture by blackface minstrelsy in the 19th century. The demise of the genre and the rise of the blues heralded Black folk’s construction of a popular space in which they sang of their real life experiences. Similar to blackface, the blues in mainstream White culture operates as the space in which racial difference is negotiated and utilized to control blackness and direct its energy according to an artist's own cultural aesthetic and worldview.

The blues is healing. The blues is freedom. That is the message I take with me everywhere I perform. As an African American blues artist, I feel it is essential to have a clearer understanding of this music. Sadly, the real knowledge of what this music is about is too often overlooked. Blues began out of a need for African Americans to seek healing and freedom in a society that denied them both. This music allowed black folks a way of expressing their humanity in a world that, for 400 plus years, refused them of their humanity. The blues was a way of saying, “we matter.”

Langston’s commitment to the preservation, documentation, and the raising of awareness regarding African American music, tradition, cultures and communities culminate in his making significant contributions to the black folk narrative, black folklife and the many expressions birthed in the urban and rural landscape of African American life.

On May 25th, 1894, Anna Julia Cooper, an African American activist, educator, and writer, spoke at a Hampton Normal School (now Hampton University). Invited to speak at a Folklore Conference, Cooper delivered a speech in a large assembly hall, addressing an audience of teachers, trustees, Hampton graduates, and folklore society members. What did she discuss that Friday evening? African American folklore.

On June 20, 1859, the schooner A.C. Brewer left New Orleans wharf bound for Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Onboard were 200 free people of color, mostly families, who planned to emigrate to Haiti permanently. They were answering a call from the Haitian government for African Americans to put their skills to work in the service of the first independent, Black nation in the western hemisphere. The young island-nation needed sailors for its ships, field workers for the abandoned sugar and coffee plantations left by French planters after the revolution, and other forms of nation-building.