I spent my summers hopscotching through neighborhood Vacation Bible Schools. VBS, as an inner-city kid was the closest I ever got to attending a traditional camp. Who needed a lake to swim in when there were water balloons by the buckets in the church lawn to splash through. I never felt deprived of mountain trail […]
Author: Velynn Brown
The Night Jesus Played a Bass and Rocked an Afro
She bought my ticket months ago when she saw the hair standing high, like a full sunrise shining and the name Esperanza in the same line of Ode Joy. I had said yes to the invitation but had totally forgotten about the plans we had made. You see, my Big Sis Doreen is a planner […]
Surviving Racial Disasters
It Happened. Again. Sneaker waves of racist lashes and systematic suicides keep hitting our neighborhoods, news feeds and nerve systems. Past reports about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Ezell Ford have now been replaced with fresh videos of Walter Scott, Philip White, Eric Harris and Freddie Gray. I have screamed, cried, cussed and […]
Meet the Princess of the Press: Ida B. Wells
Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Before Billie Holiday sang the lyrics above at Cafe Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York, another icon of history, sat nightly, frantically documenting every lynching […]