Songwriter Lula Mae Hardaway’s East Chicago Coming of Age

This Facebook Post is typical of the narrative surrounding the talented Ms. Lula Mae Hardaway, the mother of iconic singer/songwriter Stevie Wonder. Ms. Hardaway’s back story has been written about over the past decades, yet the one facet of her life coming of age in the public schools of East Chicago, Indiana always seems missing.

East Chicago’s Black Churches

This Easter season, in today’s national conversation around religion, Christian nationalism, Critical Race Theory, and the intersection of race and politics, here is an article that I contributed to The Times of Northwest Indiana in the late 1980s. Churches in American life then, as today, have been central to the political dynamics that affect our

A Great Night in Harlem: Music & Tributes to the Best of the Best

Tonight’s “Great Night in Harlem” fundraiser remains one of the City’s premier music galas of Spring. The event, sponsored by the Jazz Foundation of America (JFA), is the organization’s largest annual fundraiser. Held at the Apollo Theater in the heart of Harlem, this year’s program and star-studded post-concert celebration should once again live up to

Remembering Paul Kwami

Today I join in celebrating my friend Dr. Paul Kwami, who made his transition two years ago. Paul Kwami was former Director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers for 27 years. Although I’m not present in Nashville to honor him today, I reflect on our shared triumphs by introducing new audiences to experience concerts held by

HBCU Marching Bands – An African American Hallowed Tradition

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) football culture and marching bands remain legendary within the nation’s African American community. Not only are historic conference and regional rivalries prime arenas for showcasing some of our nation’s finest grid ironers, grooming athletes as potential Heisman trophy prospects and future NFL Hall-of-Famers, HBCU football games are also unique

Francis N’gannou: Odd Odyssey Heavyweight Contender

Like millions of others, I’ve watched Francis N’gannou’s incredible story unfold. The soft-spoken strong man from Cameroon, now risen from among the poorest of villages to the heights of sports celebrity is a compelling example of success. Burdened yet emboldened by back-breaking hard labor and low wages eked from Africa’s dehumanizing mine fields, N’gannou’s fierce

African Diasporan History: Fisk & Schomburg

I’ve long hoped that some form of scholarly and cultural collaboration would evolve between Fisk University, my alma mater, and Harlem’s historic Schomburg Center for the Study of Black History and Culture. The prospect of an ongoing scholastic and cultural bond between these two storied institutions has intrigued me, and now it has come to

Remembering My Dad

Childhood images and memories of my father cascade like a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds, and designs. Years serve as a prism and now at my age, like a child peering into the kaleidoscope, a momentary fusion of abstractions, streams of brilliance, opaqueness, symmetry, and distortion are glimpsed through the lens of time. Images changing within

Social Media’s Call and Response Can Display Redeeming Social Value

Last week jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison, the “Big Chief of the Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group,” made an unusual appeal online on Facebook during his medical emergency; an anxious request for our prayers as he awaited arrival of EMR to be taken to hospital. Many people reacted and responded to this urgent prayer

Terrance Blanchard at the SFJAZZ Collective

A new epoch in American Art and Culture emerges with Terrance Blanchard being named the new Artistic Director of SFJAZZ! New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), under direction of Wynton Marsalis, and the Bay area’s San Francisco Jazz Collective (SFJAZZ) are the epicenter of Jazz music globally. Blanchard, a native New Orleanean, has