African American issues

Kasi Lemmons' film Talk to Me, which opens this weekend, centers on the radio DJ, television personality and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. (played by Don Cheadle). Greene was a driving force in the black community of Washington D.C.; we talk with Lemmons and with Dewey Hughes, who first hired Greene at the D.C. radio station WOL-AM.

In 1961, an integrated group of self-proclaimed "Freedom Riders" challenged segregation by riding together on segregated buses through the Deep South. They demanded unrestricted access to the buses — as well as to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms — but pledged nonviolence.

A new biography of Justice Clarence Thomas explores some of the paradoxes of his life and career; it's called Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. Authors Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, both reporters at The Washington Post, say the book grew out of a Post article exploring "both the racial vehemence that has hounded Thomas and the roots of his ascension to the judicial mountaintop."

In his new book, Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey chronicles the campaign which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was working on at the time of his death. Honey is a former civil liberties organizer and a professor of ethics, gender and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Randall Kennedy is a Harvard Law professor. His new book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (Pantheon Books) is based on a series of classroom lectures he prepared exploring the history and use of the word "nigger." He found the word in literature, political debates, cartoons and songs. And he explores the use of the word from a hateful slur to a term of endearment. Kennedy is a Rhodes Scholar and he served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Kennedy also the author of Race, Crime and the Law.

Principal dancer for the Houston Ballet, and the first African-American to be a principal dancer, Lauren Anderson. She began studying at the ballet’s academy at the age of 7, and working with Stevenson at the age of 11 when he was hired by the ballet. Stevenson choreographed “Cleopatra,” for her.

Artistic director for the Houston Ballet, Ben Stevenson. He’s been with the ballet for over 25 years, turning it into a premiere dance company. The New York Times’ dance critic said of Stevenson, (he) “is one of the most original figures in the development of regional ballet in America.” Stevenson’s own choreography for the Houston ballet include the full length works: “Swan Lake,” “Cinderella,” “Peer Gynt,” “Dracula,” and “Cleopatra.” Stevenson is a native of Britain.

Authors Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor are the authors of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley, His Battle for Chicago and the Nation” (Little, Brown & Co). In the book, the authors look at Daley’s legacy, how he transformed Chicago into a modern metropolis, but also turned it into the nation’s most segregated city.

Playwright and director George C. Wolfe. He wrote and directed the hit Broadway musical “Jelly's Last Jam,” about Jelly Roll Morton. Wolfe also wrote the play “The Colored Museum,” a satire about the black experience in America. His newest musical is “The Wild Party” based on the long-lost classic poem about the roaring twenties by Joseph Moncure March. (the book was republished in 1994 with drawings by Art Spiegelman). It’s currently playing at the Public Theatre on Broadway.

Andrew Ward is the author of “Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Jubilee Singers, Who Introduced the World to the Music of Black America” (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). The Jubilee singers were nine former slaves who who set off from Nashville in 1871 to raise money to rescue their school, Fisk University, from bankruptcy. They toured the U.S., Britain, and Europe introducing audiences to African-American spirituals. The Jubilee singers are also the subject of an upcoming American Experience documentary on PBS. (Monday, May 1, 2000 at 9:00)