Sublime

creator of the Smithsonian Museum’s “Programs in Black Culture,” and one of the leading authorities on Black American music culture,

The advocates and defenders of the black jazz avant-garde and the emergent black cultural nationalists had to distance themselves from what they took to be the threat to their project of black freedom—bebop as jazz authenticity, and cultural assimilation as the solution to black cultural subordination.

founding member of a new organization called 100 Black Men. The

As my thesis advisor, the anthropologist Michael Jackson,

People need to be encouraged. Eugene Lang believed in these kids and it made all the difference in how they lived the rest of their lives. The article goes on to show Lang’s impact: Lang’s students speak confidently of becoming architects, computer experts, entrepreneurs of all types.

In the black neighborhoods, he learned that developing one’s own sound was essential and that sound and feeling were paramount over technique.

Joe was an equity icon in my book because access was always on his mind.

He conducts an ongoing interrogation about what it all means. What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it? And his inquiry isn’t bloodlessly academic, either; there’s something very consequential about his approach.