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This weekend (August 18, 2012) I'm part of a panel at Happily Natural Day in Atlanta. We're discussing why black children need to read and write science fiction. I know my reason, but how about yours? Do you think black children should read and write science fiction? Why or why not? I'm interested in your feedback.

Did you guys catch this story a few months back? (By the way, this incident did not take place in the South. ) Jessica reading the essay that she wrote: Jada Williams, 13 years old, Connects Frederick Douglass Narrative to Today's Education System Article about the events surrounding her essay (Disclaimer: I do not at all agree with the use of the terminology "throwaway students" to describe the students. ) Source: The Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York In Case You Missed It 13 Year Old Jada Williams Persecuted by the Rochester City School District Over her essay on Frederick Douglass. On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York presented the first Spirit of Freedom award to Jada Williams, a 13-year old city of Rochester student. Miss Williams wrote an essay on her impressions of Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography the Narrative of the Life. This was part of an essay contest, but her essay was never entered. It offended her teachers so much that, after harassment from teachers and school administrators at School #3, Miss Williams was forced to leave the school. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation honored her because her essay actually demonstrates that she understood the autobiography, even though it might seem a bit esoteric to most 13-year olds. In her essay, she quotes part of the scene where Douglass’ slave master catches his wife teaching then slave Frederick to read. During a speech about how he would be useless as a slave if he were able to read, Mr. Auld, the slave master, castigated his wife. Miss Williams quoted Douglass quoting Mr. Auld: “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” Miss Williams personalized this to her own situation. She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester. While she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence, she sees the fact that so many of the other “so-called ‘unteachable’” students aren’t learning to read as a form of modern-day slavery. Their illiteracy holds them back in society. Her call to action was then in her summary: “A grand price was paid in order for us to be where we are today; but in my mind we should be a lot further, so again I encourage the white teachers to instruct and I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.” This offended her English teacher so much that the teacher copied the essay for other teachers and for the Principal. After that, Miss Williams’ mother and father started receiving phone calls from numerous teachers, all claiming that their daughter is “angry.” Miss Williams, mostly a straight-A student, started receiving very low grades, and she was kicked out of class for laughing and threatened with in-school suspension. There were several meetings with teachers and administrators, but all failed to answer Miss Williams’ mother’s questions. The teachers refused to show her the tests and work that she had supposedly performed so poorly on. Instead, the teachers and administrators branded her a problem. Unable to take anymore of the persecution, they pulled her from School #3. Wanting to try another school, they were quickly informed that that school was filled and told to try “this school.” During her first day at this new school, she witnessed four fights, and other students asked her if she was put here because she fights too much. Long story short, they took an exceptional student, with the radical idea that kids should learn to read, and put her in a school of throwaway students who are even more unmanageable than the average student in her previous school. To protect their daughter, her parents have had to remove her from school, and her mother has had to quit her job so she can take care of Miss Williams. To date, the administrators of School #3 have refused to release her records, even though she no longer attends the school, and they have repeatedly given her mother the run around. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation have contacted school administrators in regards to this situation and have also been told to hit the pavement. That’s what we intend to do. If this school will sacrifice the welfare of an above-average student whose essay, that they asked her to write, they find offensive, we intend to make everyone aware of this monstrous injustice. The school has a job, and it is not doing it. We would like as many folks as possible to call the Principal of School #3 and complain about this injustice. Her name is Miss Connie Wehner, and she can be reached at (585) 454-3525. This treatment of Jada Williams cannot stand. See Video of Jada reading her Essay Here Read Related Blog posts Here, Here and Here

Reflections on Gil Scott-Heron By Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali We do what we do and how we do because of you. And to those that don’t know, tip your hat with a hand over your heart and recognize.” This is how Chuck D of Public Enemy summed up Gil Scott-Heron . Scott-Heron’s musical career spanned five decades; he released twenty albums, and many seminal singles. He was a key figure in the creation of spoken word poetry and many maintain he is the “Godfather of Rap.” However, he never referred to himself in that manner. His socially conscious work has been described as, “savagely satirical, and disarmingly tenderhearted.” His death on May 27, 2011 robbed Africans in America and the whole world of one of its most eloquent and influential artist-activists. Like the Washington D. C.-born Duke Ellington, Scott-Heron was beyond category. His music covered the waterfront. He dealt with racism, capitalism, the environment, Pan-Africanism, substance abuse, nuclear power, women's liberation and just plain "silly" little love songs. "Whitey on the Moon", "Shut Down", "The Bottle", "Angel Dust", “Johannesburg” and "Your Daddy Loves You" are parts of his catalog. I have recently completed reading Scott-Heron's memoir, The Last Holiday, which discusses his tour with Stevie Wonder and which helped create a formally recognized observance for Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. Today Dr. King's January 15th birthday is a national holiday thanks to the efforts of Wonder and Scott-Heron and millions of people in the United States. Scott-Heron was a last minute replacement for Bob Marley and the Wailers. When Marley was diagnosed with cancer, the "Eighth Wonder of the World"—Stevie—hand-picked Scott-Heron to tour with him. I was fortunate to have caught the concert in Montreal as well as an exclusive interview with Wonder. Instead of this coup firming up my relationship with the "Big White Folks" in the corporate media, I was fired. More about that at a later date. I covered the event for Al Hamilton's Contrast, "the eyes, ears and voice of the Black community" and the Toronto Star, "Canada's largest newspaper.” I was able to pull this off because Wonder and his management wanted someone with crossover appeal but who still had ties to the African community. Contrast had a corner on Canada's African community and the Toronto Star gave me a readership from Canada coast-to-coast. I was just what the doctor ordered. At that time, Wonder’s team included an individual named Keith who happened to be from Sierra Leone. It did not hurt that I had done my homework when it came to Africa and Africans. I passed the test that Keith put me through. Scott-Heron spent his childhood with his Alabama-born grandmother, Lilly Scott, in Jackson, Tennessee. I found this out the hard way on my first encounter with him in 1976 in Toronto, Canada. His bio that was circulated by Arista Records talked about him being the son of a Jamaican professional soccer player, Gil Heron. When I raised this with him he quickly rebuked me. "The Scotts raised me," he responded with his booming bass/baritone voice. I would find out years later that at that moment of our exchange in 1976, he had not yet met his father. Later, he does talk about meeting his father when he was 26 years old on the song "Hello Sunday, Hello Road.” Gil eventually left Tennessee and his grandmother since by the time Gil reached his teens, his mother, Bobbie Scott, had taken a job in New York City and he joined her there. She was an opera singer who performed with the New York Oratorio Society and the daughter of Bob Scott. Says Scott-Heron, "My grandfather was "Steel Arm Bob”, a pitcher who bested Satchel Paige's barnstorming team 1-0 when they came through Jackson." Both sides of Scott-Heron's family stressed education. Africans born in the Southern part of the United States, like their counterparts in the Caribbean, were united on this issue. Scott-Heron described his grandmother as a "God-fearing woman with high ideals, strong principles, and most of all, a belief in the power of learning." He went further to explain, "And she scrapped, scrimped, scrambled, scrunched, scrubbed, scratched, scuffled, slaved, and saved until somehow all four of her children had graduated from college with honors." This laid the basis for him to gain entry to New York City's prestigious Fieldston School. Scott-Heron attended Lincoln University, the first and oldest historically Black university in the United States. Kwame Nkrumah, Langston Hughes, Cab Calloway and Thurgood Marshall inspired him to choose Lincoln. And he did make a name for himself there by leading a strike to demand better student health care. Scott-Heron was in struggle with himself near the end of his life. The one who stood in the vanguard of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa momentarily lost his way. In 2010 he was due to perform in Tel Aviv, but this attracted criticism from Palestinian groups who stated, "Your performance in Israel would be the equivalent to having performed in Sun City during South Africa’s apartheid era... We hope that you will not play apartheid Israel." Fortunately, he heeded the call and cancelled the date. While he expressed a Love Supreme for his mother and grandmother, he publicly admits in The Last Holiday that his record on the question of other women in his life was less than stellar. Says Scott-Heron , "And it may be that I will never get another chance to say this to those children, as well as I know I have never taught them by example so that they can turn to each other for this when they need it. I hope there is no doubt that I loved them and their mothers as best as I could. And if that was inevitably inadequate, I hope it was supplemented by their mothers, who were all better off without me." He had three children, a son Rumal, and two daugthers Gia and Che. Like all human beings Scott-Heron had merits and demerits. I personally always saw him as a tortured genius. Like many who came before him and those who are living today and those who will emerge in the future.

Have you seen this movie? It is a really good movie about the life of the Shawnee (indigenous American) warrior, Tecumseh and his people ,of many nations, whom he sought to unite. Tecumseh, "a fiery orator, a brilliant diplomat, a revolutionary thinker, a political and military genius", a lover of the people for whom he died, a legend. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-PjQ_e5lVM This movie is in multiple parts.