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1/ For this year's US black history month I plan to post an article each day, drawing on my 12 years of reporting from there and beyond, including interviews (Maya Angelou (twice), Tracey Chapman, Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson) and reportage from Katrina to Black Lives Matter.
2/ I start with my annual provocation, taking on the question: "Why is there no White History Month?" Bring it on. "It would relieve the burden on African-Americans to recast the nation’s entire racial history in the shortest month of the year" https://bit.ly/3amuMNQ
3/ My interview with Claudette Colvin, the Montgomery teen local civil rights leaders elevated before Rosa Parks but dumped after she got pregnant, is the piece I'm most proud of. "They treated her like a fallen woman...she fell out of history altogether." https://bit.ly/3oCIK37
4/ Maya Angelou granted me a 45 minute interview: 16 hours later we were both drunk in her limo.
"Do you want ice and stuff with your whiskey Ms Angelou?" her assistant asked.
"I want a little bit of ice and a lot of stuff."
What a day! What a woman! https://bit.ly/3jcLROc
"Do you want ice and stuff with your whiskey Ms Angelou?" her assistant asked.
"I want a little bit of ice and a lot of stuff."
What a day! What a woman! https://bit.ly/3jcLROc
5/ While reporting this story, into the then unsolved murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi, I asked a man for directions. He went for his gun and threatened to shoot me. "If a lot has changed in Mississippi, an awful lot has also stayed the same." https://bit.ly/3pMwfTX
6/ I named my daughter after Zora Neale Hurston. "The world was not ready in 1930 for a black, working class woman driving through the South collecting folklore tales in a Chevrolet coupe she called "Sassy Susie". But Hurston was ready for the world." https://bit.ly/3jjepFE
7/ Jazz is central to New Orleans' identity. A year after hurricane Katrina its musicians were still struggling. "The idea was not to move evacuees to a safer place, but to remove them altogether: blueprints without black people." https://bit.ly/3cRbmDx
8/ Brandon Moore, 16, was shot in the back by an off-duty cop as he ran away. The Detroit papers didn't even bother to mention his name. “We’re deemed not reportable..Black children are dispensable. Violence is expected to happen in these communities.” https://bit.ly/39YPfZS
9/ When John Carlos raised his fist at the 1968 Olympics his life changed forever. "When all the dust settles and we're getting ready to play down for the ninth inning, the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet." https://bit.ly/3aJo6cT
10/ My son's 14 today: born the weekend Obama announced his presidential run. People kept telling me a black president would bode well for him. I kept asking why. "I understood the symbolic importance. I just didn't want to mistake it for substance." https://bit.ly/3cSYZqH
11/ In 1996 I worked @washingtonpost for 3 months on the @sternfellow ship: my first experience as a Black Briton in the US. "Here I look local & sound foreign & an object of intrigue. At home I look foreign & sound local & everybody tries not to notice." https://wapo.st/2MUtrWP
