African Americans

Martin Duberman's new book delves deep into the complicated political and artistic life of the African American actor and activist. Book critic John Leonard admires how exhaustive the biography is, and how it never shies away from difficult topics like Robeson's womanizing and depression.

Book critic John Leonard reviews the African American writer's new novel, set against the events surrounding the 1985 burning of the MOVE house in West Philadelphia by the Philadelphia police.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography of the former slave, writer, and abolitionist by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William McFeely. The book fills in the many gaps and silences in all three of Douglass's autobiographies.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews Wayan's new comedy film. While Schiff admires his ambition, he says the movie is short on humor and offers fraught messages about women, race, and class.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews Spike Lee's new movie, starring Denzel Washington. Schiff praises the film for how it gives each phase in X's life equal weight.

Jazz Critic Kevin Whitehead fills in for our regular film reviewer Stephen Schiff. Whitehead reviews "Posse," a new Western by Mario Van Peebles.

Professor Patricia Turner, of the African American Studies department at University of California, Davis. Her new book "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (U. of California Press) examines the historical and social ramifications of rumor in African American culture. From Ku Klux Klan-owned clothing and cigarette companies to a military conspiracy to infect Africans with AIDS, she looks at the role of legend and rumor, finding it has long been a feature of the community.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Wedding," by Dorothy West, one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance.

Mike Tyson returns to the ring Saturday night after a four year absence. Three of those years were spent in jail on a rape conviction. .Tyson continues to deny the charge. Commentator Gerald Early says that Tyson's release from prison sparked new questions about an old debate in the black community: tensions between the genders. Gerald Early teaches English at Washington University where he directs the program on African and Afro-American studies. He's the author of The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prize fighting, Literature and Modern American Culture.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two novels from the series,"Old School Books": "The Angry Ones" by John A. Williams and "The Scene" by Clarence Cooper, Jr. "Old School Books" is a reprint series of black pulp novels originally published between the mid 1950s and the 1970s.