COLONIALISM & INSTITUTIONS
White Colonial Ideologies and the Institutionalization of Power
THE BLUEPRINT: Madam C. J. Walker: The Mission We Forgot
Now, the way the story came down to me, Madam C. J. Walker made hair products, invented the hot comb, and became America’s first Black woman millionaire.
A Conversation with Elijah Anderson
Elijah Anderson, one of the leading urban ethnographers and cultural theorists in the United States, is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University. Among his many scholarly contributions to the field of sociology are five books that provide a detailed cultural history of US urban landscapes. Qualitative fieldwork he conducted as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago led to his widely acclaimed first book, A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men (University of Chicago Press, 1978), examining street-corner life at “Jelly’s,” a South Side Chicago bar.
The Auction Block and the Hit Song: Blues Is My Business
It wasn’t until 1978 that Bob Dylan would acknowledge that “Blowin’ in the Wind” was a direct adaptation from “No More Auction Block for Me.”
The song literally made him millions, but he didn’t owe anything to the song’s original creators. Dylan has a long history of litigation around his “borrowing” of elements of songs from other musicians, but when “No More Auction Block for Me” was first written down in 1867 in Slave Songs of the United States, its creation was simply attributed to “Anonymous.”
Copyrights 2025
The idea that major record labels will be devastated by the wave of artists reclaiming their copyrights is almost laughable, especially when considering what these labels currently own and control.
Harvard Cancels Slavery Research program
Harvard recently fired researchers for their Slavery Remembrance program without notice
the culture of black girl tokenism
Growing up, seeing black girls on television made me appreciate my skin color and inspired me to be an actress. But I never really paid close attention to the role of black girls on syndicated cable shows. Lately I've noticed that a lot of black roles in programs I watch are grounded in tokenism. Tokenism was established in the 1950s and was termed in the 1970s. In the late 60s and early 70s another form of token was established, “the token black”. According to Ruth Thibodeau in her piece From Racism to Tokenism:
John H. Bracey, Jr., a pioneer of Black Studies
Andrew Rosa, author (top row, second from left); John H. Bracey, Jr. (front row, fourth from left), Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Charleston, South Carolina Oct. 2, 2019.
Buffalo Soldier Project, San Angelo Texas, and Black History
In this episode of the African American Folklorist, I speak with Sherley Spears, NAACP Unit 6219 President, President of the National Historic Landmark Fort Concho, and founder of the Buffalo Soldier Project. The National Historic Landmark Fort Concho Museum preserves the structures and archeological site features for pride and educational purposes, serving the San Angelo, Texas community.