Let America Be America Again
When I was told, it takes time, when I was young, I was being told it will take time before a Black person can be treated as a human being here, but it will happen. We will help to make it happen. We promise you. Sixty years of one man’s life is a long time to deliver on a promise, especially considering all the lives preceding and surrounding my
... See moreJames Baldwin • Notes of a Native Son
In 1894 at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., Douglass delivered the last great speech of his career. Titled “The Lessons of the Hour,” it was his attempt to make sense of the rise of Jim Crow and the violent retrenchment of the era. I want to share a little of the speech with you because I think it is worthwhile... See more
Opinion | Down About the Election? There Is a Speech I Want You to Read.
Dreaming isn’t dead. It can’t be. We can do it anew. Me and you, both of us are required. I believe writing can be a moral instrument if it asks you to do more than read. Do you? How many times will you witness people being starved or worked to death, driven out of their homelands, the land blasted and lives destroyed, and be only quietly
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
If I Must Die
If I Must Die
We can hope that America will be kinder, more graceful, more compassionate, more sincerely devoted to all people being created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the truth is that celebrating the death of other human beings because we hate them or what we think they stand for is absolutely American.