Classic portrait of Langston Hughes by the German artist Winold Reiss (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine) “We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs.”––Langston Hughes Among the superstars who recently joined late-night television talk show host Arsenio Hall on the set of his newly-revived program was hip-hop pioneer and mogul Russell Simmons. In addition to expressing enthusiasm over sharing meditation with his children and exploring new film opportunities in Hollywood, Simmons spoke briefly and somewhat reservedly about a recent controversy involving artistic freedom versus social responsibility. Without going into details about the scandal-plagued “Harriet Tubman Sex Tape” video that he posted on, and then quickly removed from, his All Def Digital YouTube channel, Simmons admitted the backlash it created prompted the only instance where he felt compelled––after being pressured by different civil rights organizations––to withdraw artis...

“He captured the spotlight of history precisely at the right time, and responded with a blueprint for what America could become if it trusted its democratic legacy… He was murdered. But his dream still excites our social and political imaginations. It beckons us to work, to realize the dream that America can indeed be a truly pluralistic society and that planet Earth can be a place in the universe where peace, justice, and freedom are the dominant ethos.” ––James M. Washington, Introduction to A Testament of Hope , The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr . August 28, 2013, will mark the 50th anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington D.C. for Civil Rights and for Martin Luther King Jr.’s delivery of his now iconic “I Have a Dream” speech before a national audience.  Plans had long been underway to commemorate the event on Saturday, August 24, with a symbolic reenactment of the original march. Recent events, however, such as George Zimmerman’s ...

                                 ( embossed graphic courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Prods ) Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance , first published by Facts On File in 2003 and through Infobase Publishing in 2010, is now available as a Kindle Edition on Amazon and that is big news for a lot of good reasons. For one, 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance’s publication and a new edition of a new edition of a modern award-winning classic is always a good way to celebrate such occasions. Secondly, advances in technology proved a powerful component of the Harlem Renaissance just as it has in the contemporary era. During the 1920s and 1930s, important developments took place through the growing radio and the recording industries. Those advances not only allowed African Americans to showcase and preserve the marvels of black music such as jazz , ragti...

Though up and live, the website has been adding new content at a moderate pace as students, authors, teachers, historians, researchers and other interested visitors familiarize themselves with it and utilize the unique content to their advantage. The following is an abbreviated table of contents: 100 th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance   Home Page The Harlem Renaissance the Year 2020 The Approaching 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance In Celebration of Literary Cultural Migrations W.E.B. Du Bois and a Lesson from the Master Teacher Known as History Call for 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance Papers Bright Skylark Literary Productions 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance Website Launches - Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Web surfers who have written about Aberjhani, translated works by him, or shared links to various posts of his work began to experience something unprecedented in early September 2012. It happened while performing an advance Google search on the term “author-poet.” In addition to the expected search return of well-known classic authors and poets who fall into this category, the query unexpectedly generated the above image of various historical and contemporary authors described as: “Authors frequently mentioned on the web.” There between William Butler Yeats and Edgar Allen Poe was the famous photograph of Aberjhani taken by celebrated photographer John Zeuli. Others included William Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, James Joyce, and Charles Bukowski. Please click below to view image and read the full post : Authors Frequently Mentioned on the Web - Bright Skylark Literary Productions

“It has become appallingly obvious that our   technology   has exceeded our   humanity …”  -- Albert   Einstein Guerrilla Decontextualization is a study of trends in social media, mainstream media, and general human conduct that focus on the practice of intentionally distorting images or information for the purpose of gaining influence or popularity. Examples of it are easy to spot in some 2012 political campaign ads when a candidate for a particular office tries to dig up dirt on another candidate and uses certain phrases from interviews (as well as private conversations) or excerpts from a video, to make it look as if that one phrase or image tells the whole story. It may be that the only true or accurate context for any given event––i.e., the birth of an idea, a conversational exchange, a clash or embrace between two or more entities–– is the moment in which it occurs. Everything else is a slanted interpretation, leaning either more toward or a...

For full story please click the link: Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance eBook Published - Welcome to Aberjhani's