vintageblackglamour:

Regal Esther Rolle chats with Sammy Davis Jr. on “Sammy & Company” in the early 1970s. Charo, Danny Thomas and Charley Pride are also on the couch. Via @swtblackberry

supersonicelectronic:

SUPERSONIC REVIEWS: HIGH LINE

High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky offers a intriguing look into the development and design of the iconic, beautiful park by the project’s co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond. The book, perfectly designed by Pentagram, holds the story of how the High Line came to be, from the original elevated railway on Manhattan’s west side until it’s reclamation and urban renewal as an elevated park. With over 250 pages of photographs, High Line, is certainly attention worthy. But, perhaps, the book’s most wonderful attribute is the artistic and design sensitive ideals that David and Hammond held so dearly in the production of the park.

kwesiabbensetts:

(c) Kwesi Abbensetts

Who is the joke and who is the Joker.

Am I really of “Post-Black-ness”. Is that my new heritage.

“Post-black art is a phrase that refers to a category of contemporary African American art. It is a paradoxical genre of art where race and racism are intertwined in a way that rejects their interaction. I.e., it is art about the black experience that attempts to dispel the notion that race matters. It uses enigmatic themes wherein black can substitute for white.[1] Some suggest the term is attributable to the 1995 book The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson.”

darkjez: The Prison of the White American View of History James Baldwin writing in the August 1965 issue of Ebony magazine, starting on page 47: My point of view certainly is formed by my history, and it is probable that only a creature despised by history finds history a questionable matter. On the other hand, people who imagine history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world. This is the place in which, it seems to me, most white Americans find themselves. Impaled. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence. This incoherence is heard nowhere more plainly than in those stammering, terrified dialogues white Americans sometimes entertain with that black conscience, the black man in America. The nature of this stammering can be reduced to a plea: Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it. My history has nothing to do with Europe or the slave trade. Anyway, it was your chiefs who sold you to me. I was not present on the middle passage. I am not responsible for the textile mills of Manchester, or the cotton fields of Mississippi. Besides, consider how the English, too, suffered in those mills and in those awful cities! I also despise the governors of Southern states and the sheriffs of Southern counties, and I also want your child to have a decent education and rise as high as his capabilities will permit. I have nothing against you, nothing! What have you got against me? What do you want? But, on the same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart always, the white American, remains proud of that history for which he does not wish to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much. On that same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart always, the black American finds himself facing the terrible roster of his lost: the dead, black junkie; the defeated, black father; the unutterably weary, black mother; the unutterably ruined black girl. And one begins to suspect an awful thing: that people believe that they deserve their history, and that when they operate on this belief, they perish. But one knows that they can scarcely avoid believing that they deserve it; one’s short time on this earth is very mysterious and very dark and very hard. I have known many black men and women and black boys and girls who really believed that it was better to be white than black, whose lives were ruined or ended by this belief; and I, myself, carried the seeds of this destruction within me for a long time. via Abagond

darkjez:

The Prison of the White American View of History

James Baldwin writing in the August 1965 issue of Ebony magazine, starting on page 47:

My point of view certainly is formed by my history, and it is probable that only a creature despised by history finds history a questionable matter. On the other hand, people who imagine history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.

This is the place in which, it seems to me, most white Americans find themselves. Impaled. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence. This incoherence is heard nowhere more plainly than in those stammering, terrified dialogues white Americans sometimes entertain with that black conscience, the black man in America.

The nature of this stammering can be reduced to a plea: Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it. My history has nothing to do with Europe or the slave trade. Anyway, it was your chiefs who sold you to me. I was not present on the middle passage. I am not responsible for the textile mills of Manchester, or the cotton fields of Mississippi. Besides, consider how the English, too, suffered in those mills and in those awful cities! I also despise the governors of Southern states and the sheriffs of Southern counties, and I also want your child to have a decent education and rise as high as his capabilities will permit. I have nothing against you, nothing! What have you got against me? What do you want? But, on the same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart always, the white American, remains proud of that history for which he does not wish to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much.

On that same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart always, the black American finds himself facing the terrible roster of his lost: the dead, black junkie; the defeated, black father; the unutterably weary, black mother; the unutterably ruined black girl. And one begins to suspect an awful thing: that people believe that they deserve their history, and that when they operate on this belief, they perish. But one knows that they can scarcely avoid believing that they deserve it; one’s short time on this earth is very mysterious and very dark and very hard. I have known many black men and women and black boys and girls who really believed that it was better to be white than black, whose lives were ruined or ended by this belief; and I, myself, carried the seeds of this destruction within me for a long time.

via Abagond

The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).”

He continues: “Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean”

Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. (via comingonstrong)
blackfashion: CEO, Creative Director of Lipstick N. Cigars “The First Men’s Clothing Line For Women” Lipstick-n-cigars.com Lipstick-n-cigars.tumblr.com

blackfashion:

CEO, Creative Director of Lipstick N. Cigars

“The First Men’s Clothing Line For Women”

Lipstick-n-cigars.com

Lipstick-n-cigars.tumblr.com

tbgptumbles:

We’ve added a few more shirts to go along with our original 4. All of the proceeds go to supporting the work of The Black Girl Project. So head to the shop and grab a few! 

Society’s reliance on prisons and punishment does not make our communities safer. The warehousing of human beings, mostly people of color, is an unacceptable substitute for social programs. Prisons are not a substitute for mental health care, and jails are not housing for the homeless. We work to develop political power and healthy communities. The criminal justice system is cruelly devastating and disrupting, especially in communities of color. After two generations of the Drug War, the American people are suffering far more than when it began. Over 2 million people are currently locked up United States prisons and jails. Over 2 million children have a parent behind bars, and 10 million children have had a parent in prison at some time in their lives. With the explosion of criminalization in the 1980’s and 1990’s, we have entire school systems facing the affects of parents being incarcerated or facing the discrimination of a criminal record.
Highly recommend checking out the entire Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted Peoples Movement National Platform. Excellent. (via harmreduction)
dulltooldimbulb: NOW AVAILABLE AS an Ebook for iPad and iPhone History of the Black Pin Up SECRET HISTORY OF THE BLACK PIN UP BOOK!  The FIRST book on women of color and the smut industry 120 pages $5.99 ebook order HERE Over 100 RARE ILLUSTRATIONS

dulltooldimbulb:

NOW AVAILABLE AS an Ebook for iPad and iPhone History of the Black Pin Up

SECRET HISTORY OF THE BLACK PIN UP BOOK!  The FIRST book on women of color and the smut industry 120 pages $5.99 ebook order HERE

Over 100 RARE ILLUSTRATIONS

chocol8luv: campuscelebrity: I’m Young… Gifted… And Black  You can never say this too much.

chocol8luv:

campuscelebrity:

I’m Young… Gifted… And Black

 You can never say this too much.