When Shaw University’s WSHA (88.9 FM) hit the airwaves in 1968, it wasn’t just a voice for the college; it was a voice for all the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) nationwide. Although 1968 seems late, the tiny station in Raleigh was the first radio station to broadcast from a black college in the […]
Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell
Posted inNews
Urban myths
Signing on to my e-mail recently, I found a message in my inbox with a subject line that screamed: “BUSH SIGNED ‘NO BLACKS’ AGREEMENT.” Now this message, from the listserv of an African-American poet and activist, alleged that presidential candidate George W. Bush once affixed his John Hancock to real estate documents pledging, if he […]
Posted inArt
Collective power
Armed with wit and a crisp South African accent, author Mark Mathabane could be everyone’s favorite cultural studies professor, his speech peppered with references to liberation, oppression and resistance. But don’t mistake Mathabane for an academic or a checkbook activist; he’s a grade-A agitator. This slight, quietly energetic man “called out” the South African regime […]
Posted inGuides
E.B. and Juanita Palmer
The first stop on any tour of Raleigh’s African-American Cultural Complex is the living room. From this vantage point, there’s no indication that the house at 119 Sunnybrook Road, near the Walnut Creek arena, is a museum–until Juanita Palmer walks in the back door. Wearing a T-shirt heralding the accomplishments of African-American inventors, Juanita Palmer […]
Posted inArt
Novel ideas
Every great or high-grossing movie is inevitably followed by The Making of …, through which moviegoers can deconstruct things like special effects and casting. But in painting, the most revered works often belong to artists long dead. It is a rarity when a canvas comes with a creation story, so we are left to marvel […]
Posted inNews
Women’s Day
On Saturday, May 6, Bradley Hall at Raleigh’s Highland United Methodist Church resembled the Tower of Babel. Southeast Asian and African immigrant and refugee women saluted the more than 100 assembled there in a flurry of languages: English, French, Arabic, Amharic, Vietnamese and others. Yet unlike the biblical tower, the messages at the Southeast Asian […]
Posted inNews
Out in the trenches
Here’s a sentiment you don’t hear often in this age of clean elections and accountability for candidates: I miss all the political pandering. With the spate of early presidential primaries, and North Carolina’s May 2, the Old North State is missing out and other states have gained leverage. The contentious Republican primary in South Carolina […]
Posted inNews
Overextended
I was weaned on taxes, like infants are introduced to solid food. I spelled IRA in alphabet soup, and when April 16 rolled around every year, my father was at the kitchen table planning the next year’s return. But two weeks ago, I looked at my pinkish-orange 1040A form, and felt the stirrings of panic; […]
Posted inArt
The princess and the premiere
When local arts booster Penelope Bridgers gets the creative urge, she thinks big. And as the mind behind Luyala, a one-of-a-kind performance premiering next week, she is giving new meaning to collaboration. In fact, the African-themed Luyala is neither a dance nor an opera. It’s both: a dance-opera. According to Bridgers, the hybrid is “not […]
Posted inNews
Mamadou Diabate
In art, sometimes it takes one person to break through and open the doors for others. That is exactly what Mali’s Toumani Diabate did, releasing the first kora album to hit the United States, and now his cousin, Mamadou Diabate, is using that path and the 21-stringed West African harp-lute to establish his own roads […]