Black Experience

UMBC president to speak on black experience in Ala. New Zion Center of Hope in Ellicott City will hear speaker Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, at 11 a.m. Sunday as part of African-American Freedom Month. Hrabowski will talk about his experience as a member of an Alabama church that was bombed 1963, killing four girls, and about his role as the president of a research university. The New Zion church is at 8565 Main St. Information: the Rev. John P. Carter, 410-465-3366.

This is for those who keep asking what I think of Herman Cain. In particular, it's for those who want to know what the tea party's embrace of this black businessman turned presidential candidate says about my claim that the tea party is racist. I might eat the plate of crow those folks proffer if I'd ever actually made that claim. What I have said, fairly consistently, is something more nuanced: Racial animus is an element of tea party ideology, but not its entirety. As I once noted in this space, the tea party probably would not exist if Condoleezza Rice were president.

IT'S NOT JUST what's inside Baltimore's new Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture that makes it so special. An innovative program will soon bring the museum into classrooms across Maryland and help cement the state's reputation as a national leader in teaching the black experience. It's vital that we take creative steps like this. A full appreciation of our nation's story is a critical social anchor, and you simply don't know American history if you don't know the black experience.

- In her most memorable line from "Precious," Mo'Nique's character plaintively asks, "Who is going to love me?" But that's a question the Baltimore County-born actress may never have to ask again, not after receiving a standing ovation for winning the best supporting actress Oscar at Sunday night's 82nd annual Academy Awards. "God bless us all," said the composed, but clearly emotional, actress, whose star turn in "Precious" has garnered widespread, critical acclaim and numerous awards.

The author's goal, stated in the book flaps and prologue, is as intriguing as it is immense: Hit the road and find out what it is like to be a black American in these times.And so, Walt Harrington, a writer for the Washington Post's Sunday magazine, set off on three journeys -- through the South, the North and the West. Through more than 100 conversation vignettes, he offers a treatment that's somewhat interesting but inherently flawed.Mr. Harrington's subjects are affluent and impoverished, urban and rural, old and young, meek and violent, unknown and famous (filmmaker Spike Lee in New York, author Dori Sanders in York, S.C.)

Almost nothing is black and white when it comes to blacks and television. What looks to be a step forward often turns out to be two or more steps back.Just as "The Cosby Show" was being hailed as one of the most progressive sitcoms ever, along came a study that found many white viewers used the upper-middle-class status of the Huxtable family as proof that black Americans no longer faced any barriers in the real world.L In other words, the series helped them justify their racism.And just as we were about to applaud network television for creating a realistic, working-class comedy about blacks after decades of eye-rolling stereotypes like "Good Times," Fox cancels "Roc."

WASHINGTON -- Anyone intimately familiar with the nation's capital knows of its significant African-American population, a community both highly visible and deeply entrenched. Yet rarely has the district's longtime status as a hub of black history and culture been properly recognized, at least on a grand scale. That's all changed with the launch of Blues & Dreams, a citywide tourism thrust using the arts, literature and history to spotlight the black experience. The campaign kicked off in September and runs through the end of this month.

In her most memorable line from "Precious," Mo'Nique's character plaintively asks, "Who is going to love me?" But that's a question the Baltimore County-born actress may never have to ask again, not after receiving a standing ovation for winning the best supporting actress Oscar at Sunday night's 82nd annual Academy Awards. "God bless us all," said the composed, but clearly emotional, actress, whose star turn in "Precious" has garnered widespread, critically acclaim and numerous awards.

- In her most memorable line from "Precious," Mo'Nique's character plaintively asks, "Who is going to love me?" But that's a question the Baltimore County-born actress may never have to ask again, not after receiving a standing ovation for winning the best supporting actress Oscar at Sunday night's 82nd annual Academy Awards. "God bless us all," said the composed, but clearly emotional, actress, whose star turn in "Precious" has garnered widespread, critical acclaim and numerous awards.

This is for those who keep asking what I think of Herman Cain. In particular, it's for those who want to know what the tea party's embrace of this black businessman turned presidential candidate says about my claim that the tea party is racist. I might eat the plate of crow those folks proffer if I'd ever actually made that claim. What I have said, fairly consistently, is something more nuanced: Racial animus is an element of tea party ideology, but not its entirety. As I once noted in this space, the tea party probably would not exist if Condoleezza Rice were president.

In her most memorable line from "Precious," Mo'Nique's character plaintively asks, "Who is going to love me?" But that's a question the Baltimore County-born actress may never have to ask again, not after receiving a standing ovation for winning the best supporting actress Oscar at Sunday night's 82nd annual Academy Awards. "God bless us all," said the composed, but clearly emotional, actress, whose star turn in "Precious" has garnered widespread, critically acclaim and numerous awards.

Morris Chestnut never met any actors from the 1970s films about street-wise cops, flashy hustlers, pimps and prostitutes that defined African-American culture on the big screen then - a genre that came to be known as "blaxploitation." But he and other young African-American actors were still dealing with that imagery years later, when films about black teen life in the 'hood were a hit in Hollywood in the 1990s. They frequented auditions for gangster roles, suppressing mixed emotions about playing such parts and sometimes getting rejected with words that resonate to this day. "Sorry, not black enough."

If African-Americans don't buy artworks by African-American artists, who will? A decade ago, that question prompted a group of black collectors in Washington to join together to share their knowledge and experience. They wanted to create a forum where they could discuss African-American art, make group visits to artists' studios and find ways to support local artists, dealers and visual arts programs. The fruits of their efforts are on display this month in Holding Our Own, a lovely exhibition of African-American artworks owned by members of the Collectors Club of Washington at the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi.

AUGUST WILSON once said that jazz and blues music were an affirmation and celebration of the value and worth of the African-American spirit. Let us add a coda to that thought: So are the plays of August Wilson. The playwright's death Sunday is a tremendous loss to the American cultural repertory. He ranks among our greatest writers, his prize-winning plays offering a unique, vivid and powerful insight into the contemporary black experience. Mr. Wilson often described himself as a poet who turned into a playwright.

August Wilson, one of the most accomplished, ambitious and prolific playwrights in the history of the American theater, died yesterday of liver cancer. The 60-year-old playwright had most recently been working on revisions of Radio Golf, the 10th and final play in his monumental, decade-by-decade series chronicling the African-American experience in the 20th century. The cycle - whose plays garnered two Pulitzer Prizes and a host of other awards - stands as an unprecedented achievement.

IT'S NOT JUST what's inside Baltimore's new Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture that makes it so special. An innovative program will soon bring the museum into classrooms across Maryland and help cement the state's reputation as a national leader in teaching the black experience. It's vital that we take creative steps like this. A full appreciation of our nation's story is a critical social anchor, and you simply don't know American history if you don't know the black experience.

25 years ago (week of June 20-26, 1971):The Thomas Viaduct in Elkridge was declared a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.Plans were announced for the Institute for the Study of the Black Experience in Howard County under the sponsorship of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Institute volunteers planned to reconstruct the county's black heritage from church records and similar documentation, as well as from interviews with older county residents.

AUGUST WILSON once said that jazz and blues music were an affirmation and celebration of the value and worth of the African-American spirit. Let us add a coda to that thought: So are the plays of August Wilson. The playwright's death Sunday is a tremendous loss to the American cultural repertory. He ranks among our greatest writers, his prize-winning plays offering a unique, vivid and powerful insight into the contemporary black experience. Mr. Wilson often described himself as a poet who turned into a playwright.

WASHINGTON -- Anyone intimately familiar with the nation's capital knows of its significant African-American population, a community both highly visible and deeply entrenched. Yet rarely has the district's longtime status as a hub of black history and culture been properly recognized, at least on a grand scale. That's all changed with the launch of Blues & Dreams, a citywide tourism thrust using the arts, literature and history to spotlight the black experience. The campaign kicked off in September and runs through the end of this month.

IN ADDITION to the usual basketball fervor, there will be another outbreak of "March madness" at the University of Maryland, College Park early in the spring. That's when teams from Maryland elementary and middle schools will compete at Stamp Student Union in the finals of the Black Saga Competition. Picture a combination of It's Academic, Jeopardy and a geography bee, as kids search their memories for the dates, facts and figures of black history. The children compete in teams of three as parents and teachers cheer them on. To succeed, they must successfully answer rigorous questions about people, places and events dating to the great West African empires of 500 to 1600.