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Where are the Folk in Folk Art?
Each year, Steve Hessler and Dolly Vehlow make a pilgrimage from their home in Washington, D.C., to the Kentuck Festival of the Arts in Northport, Ala., to chat with old friends and buy art. Since the 1990s, the couple has purchased pieces from Mose Tolliver, Charlie Lucas, Yvonne Wells and Betty Sue Matthews, a cadre…
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Why Jews Should Vote for Obama
On Election Day, the relationship between Jewish-American voters and Barack Obama will be like a big midterm in a graduate course on coalition politics. It’s a trust walk between the Democratic Party’s two most reliable constituent demographics and a test of the bond between two minority groups that have marched arm-in-arm at times and feuded…
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Barack Obama Can Do Three Whole Pull-Ups
This picture of presidential hopeful Barack Obama doing pull-ups in Missoula, MT was taken by the photographer Callie Shell for Time magazine last April. I like it! Shell has snapped an entire collection of wistful shots of the great black/white Hope from Illinois, some grand and sweeping, others mundanely human. Just like those ones of…
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Keep 'Gossip Girl' White
Months ago I got a message from an old schoolyard chum, “It’s our 10-year anniversary. Can you believe it?” The thought of a reunion had me super excited. We could flip through our high-school memories like flash cards. The time Ms. Dumoski taught an entire period of trig with her skirt tucked into her control…
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Hendrix Lives
Defined by the chaos of a presidential campaign under literal siege, an unpopular foreign war and the compound tragedies of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the year 1968 was a pivot point in the national life—the year America almost stopped being America. Part of that upheaval was cultural. The…
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The New Old Dominion
Since 1964, one thing that’s been as inevitable as death and taxes has been that Virginia would wind up in the red column in presidential elections. The Old Dominion’s loyalty to the Republican Party was so secure that GOP candidates made only token appearances in the state. This year things are different. If the polls…
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'I'll Be Voting for Sen. Barack Obama.'
“Because I do what the facts tell me, Captain…” – Capt. Richard Davenport from A Soldier’s Play (1981) The true importance of any political endorsement is debatable. But this one is big, since it involves America’s most recognizable military hero declaring a preference that could help undecided centrist Republicans and independents make up their minds.…
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All Twittered Out
I am glad there will be no debate this week. I skipped them all. Okay, I watched them in bits and pieces on YouTube after the fact. But I couldn’t take the intense emotion of the actual events. It’s not that I’m sitting on the sidelines. I am politically involved and well informed. But the…
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'The Express': Slow and Steady
The Express is a film based on the life of Syracuse University football star Ernie Davis, the first African American to win a Heisman Trophy. But for all of us who are tired of clichéd sports flicks, the film offers something that is not just surprising, but rare: a story about strong and meaningful relationships…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
