Remembering 4 Little Girls + 2 Songs
It was 55 years years ago that the four Birmingham, Alabama girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, lost their lives during the bombing of the Sixteenth Street...
View ArticleStew and Heidi return with two new albums: Notes Of A Native Song and The...
The year’s end brought not one but two new albums of material by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, known professionally as The Negro Problem. Stew’s the wordman and Rodewald is the melodicist, arranger and...
View ArticleThe Last Holiday: On Stevie Wonder, Gil Scott-Heron and the Dream of an MLK...
Today is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. It was a long road to the third Monday in January when all 50 states will observe a federal holiday named...
View ArticleFreedom Singer Len Chandler and the March on Washington
Today marks the 57th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Among those assembled to help Dr. King push forward his dream of racial harmony and economic justice was Len...
View ArticleSan Francisco Names Eighth Poet Laureate: Tongo Eisen-Martin
“My poems are a product of a complete life of resistance,” said Tongo Eisen-Martin when I interviewed him for the San Francisco Examiner in 2018. On Friday, the San Francisco-born movement worker,...
View ArticleBloody Sunday: Freedom Highway Revisited
Five songs into their set at Chicago’s New Nazareth Church, the Staple Singers get down to the real, and the reason, they called their gospel meeting on April 9, 1965. “A few days ago freedom marchers...
View ArticleWhich side are you on, boys?
The stats are in: 66 songs, 110 writers, four songs performed by women and seven written by them. The woman pictured between Little Richard and Eddie Cochran is Alis Lesley, an obscure pioneer of rock...
View ArticleStevie Wonder, Gil Scott-Heron and the road to MLK Day
Today would have been the 94th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a long road to the third Monday of the month when all 50 states will observe a...
View ArticleRest In Power, Len Chandler: Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows Died on August...
As anyone with their eyes on the prize knows, the 60th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was on August 28, 2023. Among those assembled to help Dr. King push forward...
View ArticleFor MLK Day: Len Chandler’s Shadow Dream – in memory of a singer, a movement...
Len Chandler was a protest singer, movement worker and unsung hero from the Civil Rights Era, a frontline campaigner in the fight for voting rights, racial and economic justice and against wars of...
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