African-American Issues

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Colored People."

Scholar and activist Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He's Professor of English and Chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard and one of Afro-American studies most visible and controversial proponents. Gates believes that Black studies should be a methodology, not an ideology, and that you don't have to be black to teach African-American literature.

Civil rights attorney and law professor Jack Greenberg. He was just out of law school--a white Jewish man from the Bronx when he joined the fledgling NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Greenberg took over the helm of the LDF from his mentor Thurgood Marshall when Marshall was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals. During Greenberg's tenure there, the LDF litigated some of the watershed cases of the civil rights struggle. He has just published a memoir of his 35 years at the LDF.

Author Melba Beals. Forty years ago today the United States Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in "Brown v. Board of Education." Three years later, Beals and eight other black teenagers chose to attend the all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the process Beals suffered a school year marked by unremitting violence and hatred. Danny, the soldier assigned to protect her, warned her that she too would have to become a soldier.

Filmmaker Haile Gerima. He was born in Ethiopia and now lives in America. His latest movie, "Sankofa," which he wrote and directed, is an epic about African-American slavery, from Africans' 18th century journey to America to their struggles for liberation, told for the first time from an African viewpoint. Gerima is a professor of film at Howard University in Washington, DC. Along with "Sankofa," two of his past features, "Harvest: 3,000 Years" and "Ashes and Embers" have won international awards.

Gary Orfield. He is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of its Project on School Desegregation. His report, "The Growth of Segregation in American Schools: Changing Patterns of Separation and Poverty since 1968" was recently issued to the National School Board Association. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court found that the races in America's schools were segregated and the education was unequal. For awhile, integration was on the increase. But Orfield has found that today our schools have slipped backward.

Commentator Gayle Pemberton comments on Black History Month.

Doctor of Psychology and editorial writer for the New York Times, Brent Staples. His new memoir is "Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black & White" (Pantheon). In 1984, Staples' younger brother, a cocaine dealer, was murdered. Staples began a process of reconsideration of the major questions in his life: his distance from his family by graduate study at the University of Chicago; the demise and racial divisions of his industrial hometown in Pennsylvania. On missing his brother's memorial, Staples writes "Choose carefully the funerals you miss."

Reporter for The Washington Post Nathan McCall. He's written a new autobiography, "Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America." (Random House). When McCall was twenty years old he was sent to prison for armed robbery.

Rapper and actor Ice-T...one of the most popular of the "gangsta" rappers. Although he does not often get his songs played on the radio, all five of his albums have gone gold. Greg Knot of The Chicago Tribune has written that "Ice-T. is that rare gangster rapper who leads with his brain instead of his gun or his crotch." IIce-T.'s 1992 song "Cop Killer," landed him at the center of a controversy about gangsta rap--is it a legitimate form of expression or is it incendiary hate-mongering. Ice-T.

Gregory Alan-WIilliams, Emmy Award winning actor, author and playwright. He has written "A Gathering of Heroes, Reflections on Rage and Responsibility," a memoir of the Los Angeles Riots (Academy Chicago Publishers). On April 29, 1992, Alan-WIilliams, an African American, heard that violence had erupted in South Central L.A. and chose to walk into the heart of the riot. He ended up risking his own life to rescue a Japanese American man who was being brutally beaten by some in the angry crowd.

Writer Shirlee Taylor Haizlip. Her book "The Sweeter the Juice: a Family Memoir in Black and White, (Simon & Schuster), chronicles her exploration of six generations of her multiracial family tree. Haizlip is a light-skinned African-American. Her father was a prominent black Baptist minister in Connecticut. Her mother was the descendant of an Irish immigrant and a mulatto slave.

Contributing Editor and essayist for Newsweek magazine Ellis Cose. His new book, "The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why are Middle-Class Blacks Angry? Why Should America Care?" (HarperCollins) is about what many middle-class blacks feel, but few white americans understand: that middle-class blacks still struggle against racial stereotyping, discrimination, and alienation, despite their financial success and their best efforts to "play by the rules." Cose argues that many white americans make assumptions about Blacks which are at odds with reality.

Writer Gloria Wade-Gayles. Growing up in Memphis in the 1940's Wade-Gayles experienced Jim Crow discrimination first hand. In her new book of autobiographical essays, "Pushed Back To Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home" (Beacon), she reflects on her childhood, the civil-rights movements, abortion in the African-American community, and the death of her mother. Wade-Gayles is a professor of English and women's studies at Spelman College. She also wrote "No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Sex in Black Women's Fiction" (Pilgrim Press).

Novelist Albert French. He found inspiration for his first novel, "Billy" (Viking), in the true story of an 11-yr-old getting the electric chair in the 1930's. "Billy," is the story of the "legal lynching" of a ten year old boy in the deep south who inadvertently kills a white girl. French writes in "Delta" dialect, epitomizing racial hatred in America. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Ralph Wiley: journalist, staff writer at "Sports Illustrated" for nine years, he's now an essayist on the dynamics of race in America. His pieces have been collected in two books, "Why Black People Tend to Shout" (Penguin) and newly, "What Black People Should Do Now" (Ballantine).

Journalist and former anchor of the CBS News, Walter Cronkite. Thirty years after Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech, Cronkite questions whether African-Americans choose to integrate into society or socialize primarily with each other. Cronkite's newest project "The Faltering Dream," questions whether integration is still a goal or if a "equal but separate" is a more appropriate approach to race relations. In "The Faltering Dream," Cronkite interviews notable black leaders including Reverend Jesse Jackson and Spike Lee.

Lawyer, professor, and former nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Lani Guinier. Guinier's nomination was withdrawn by President Clinton, after Republicans and Democrats started to question her views, as expressed in her academic writings, labeling her a "racial separatist," and the "quota queen." Guinier talks with Terry about her views, her work with the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational fund to amend the the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and how she was misunderstood and misrepresented during the nomination process.

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 Gayle Pemberton on the importance of African-American magazines.