Some of them are long forgotten. But their legacy is not, and their cause is still valid, today more than ever.Right On!

1. Gil Scott Heron
2. Leroi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka)
3. Nikki Giovanni
4. The Last Poets
5. W.E.B. DuBois
6. Camille Yarbrough
7. Sun Ra

These are my favorite. Any others?
(btw: This is not meant to be a racially segregative thread. But obviously the cause of those people is connected to the particular race they are)

Here is one of my favorites from Gil Scott Heron called "HIStory"

I was wondering about our yesterday's and digging through the rubble.
And 2 say the least somebody went through a hell of alot of trouble.
2 make sure that when we looked things up we didn't fare 2 well.
And that we would come up with totally unreliable pictures of ourselves.
But i compliled a few facts such as they are.
2 c if we could find out a little bit of something
and this is what i got so far.
First white folks discovered africa.They claimed it fair and square.
Cecil Rhodes couldn't have been robbing anybody cause..hell there wasn't nobody there.
The white folks brought all the civilization..cause there wasn't none around.
How could the folks b civilized when nobody was writing nothing down?
And just 2 prove their suspitions well..it didn't take 2 long.
They found out there were whole tribes of people in plain sight,
Running around with no clothes on..that's right.
The men the women the young and the old rightous folks covered their eyes.
And no time was spent considering the environment..hell no this just wasn't civilized.
And another piece of infomation they had or at least this is what we were taught.
Is that unlike the civilized people of europe..these tribal units actually fought.
And yes there was some crude impliments and yes there was primitive art.
And yes they were masters of hunting and fishing and courtesy came from the heart.
And yes there was love and medicine intertribal communication by drum.
But no paper no pencils or other utencils and hell these folks never even heard of a gun.
And this is y the colonies came 2 stabilize the land.
Cause the dark continent had copper and gold and the discoverers had themselves a plan.
They would discover all the places of promise u didn't need no titles or deeds.
And then they would appoint people 2 make everything legal 2 santion the trickery and greed.
And back in the jungle when the natives got restless they would call it gorilla attack.
And they would never descibed that the folks got wise and decided that they would fight back.
And still we r victims of word games symantics is always a bitch.
Places once referred 2 as underdeveloped r now called mineral rich.
And the game goes on eternally unity just beyond reach.
Egypt and Libya used 2 b in Africa..theyv'e now been moved 2 the Middle East.
There r examples galore i assure u..but if interpeting were left up 2 me.
I'd b sure evreytime folks knew this version wasn't mine which is y it is called
HIStory.
GIL SCOTT HERON.

Right on, 4love, you have proven that you are literate. Any others?

I remove my ealier post to keep this thread positive like it should be.
[This message was edited Mon Nov 18 7:10:47 PST 2002 by 4LOVE]

Here is one for you, and one who is very much
alive today!

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run around like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou




Here's another:
and very much alive

"If I'm under water, will U find me?
Will U shine a light and try 2 guide me?
It's happened before, I've knocked on your door
But U wouldn't let me in"

"How beautiful do the words have 2 be
Before they conquer every heart?"

Prince

A poem by Langston Hughes:

I, Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.


Info:
http://www.poets.org/poem...prmID=1479

The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks


Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Excerpt from Panther Power
[Tupac]
As real as it seems the American Dream
Ain't nothing but another calculated schemes
To get us locked up shot up back in chains
To deny us of the future rob our names
Kept my history of mystery but now I see
The American Dream wasn't meant for me
Cause lady liberty is a hypocrite she lied to me
Promised me freedom, education, equality
Never gave me nothing but slavery
And now look at how dangerous you made me
Calling me a mad man cause I'm strong and bold
With this dump full of knowledge of the lies you told
Promise me emancipation indispute nation
All you gave my people was our patience
Fathers of our country never cared for me
They kept my answer shackled up in slavery
And Uncle Sam never did a dam thing for me
Except lie about the facts in my history
So now I'm sitting hear mad cause I'm unemployed
But the government's glad cause they enjoyed
When my people are down so they can screw us around
Time to change the government now panther power




And they say he wasn't a poet!

NIKKI GIOVANI!!!

LaVisHh said:

Natsume said:

This man deserves a LOT of respect...in my humble opinion.

A true innovator. A talented writer, and poet.

Someone who experienced what things were like, and dared to write about it.

Ralph Ellison's "Invisible man" is a Must.Richard Wright's Native Son strikes a Chord still.Alex Hailey with Roots moves me stiil.Malcolm X,Mayou Angelou,Toni Morrison,Nikki Giovanni,W.E. Dubois,Dr King,Dick Gregory,Alice Walker,Langston Hughes,and so many others move me with there Words of wisdom&feelings involving the Struggle.

Excellent thread!

This thread put a woozy feeling inside my chest, and it's sad that those who probably need to "hear" this will not. Last night I went to an event for Africans and one portion of the event asked the children to respond to African and African American history. It was embarrasing, as this subject is not taught in our schools. A lot of people will never know the greatness to Black Poets and Thinkers as it forces them to recognize their own faults and shortcomings, which is of course a prerequiste to progress.

Some of my favorites

-Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of...
-Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
-Martin Delaney, one of the fathers of pan-Africanism
-David Walker, Appeal
-W.E.B. DuBois, the whole double consciousness thing
-Booker T Washington, don't care how much he seemed like a sellout, he BUILT an institution from the ground up in the middle of Jim Crow south
-Marcus Garvey, Up you mighty nation accomplish what you will
-Amalcar Cabral, Claim no easy victories and tell no lies to the people
-Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks & The Wretched of the Earth
-Martin L. King, Jr., especially post-65 Martin (long after he had a dream)
-Elijah Muhammad, Accept your own and be yourself
-Malcolm X, my life has been a chronology of changes
-Angela Davis, Women Race and Class
-Audre Lorde, you cannot use the master's tools to dismantle his house
-bell hooks, intellectual insurgency
-Cornel West, the sympathetic critic... Race Matters
-Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization
-Louis Farrakhan, "He who gives you the diameter of your knowledge, prescribes the circumference of your activity."
.
[This message was edited Tue Nov 19 8:30:43 PST 2002 by NuPwrSoul]

Dont Forget Make Me Wanna Holla-Nathan McCall..not exactly run of the mill "thinker" but one who went from down there to up there. Experience instead fo being born into middle class society and academia is just as important imho.

Nikki Giovanni--she will break it down and break it off..

.
[This message was edited Sun Nov 17 18:05:02 PST 2002 by rdhull]

George Jackson, for Soledad Brother
Alonda Alloway, for her heart
Talib Kweli, for his lyrics
Amiri Baraka, for everything

I am embarrassed that by reading some of these names I didnt think of them when I started this thread, i.e. Angela Davism Langston Hughes...
any more, peeps? We dont want nobody to feel left out!

The poets of the Harlem Renaissance (one of my favorite times in black history):

Jean Toomer
Gwendolyn Brooks
Claude Mckay
Langston Hughes
Countee Cullen

Black Feminist Writers and Activitist

Pearl Cleage
Patricia Hill Collins
Bell Hooks
Angela Davis
Alice Walker


Much respect to Cornel West

Rhondab said:

Good one!

I dig Alice Walker and Maya Angelou too

Richard Wright is best known for his novels, but he is also a good poet as well.

I haven't seen Lorraine Hansberry mentioned yet. "A Raisin in the Sun" is an awesome work. I am sure she would have written many more classics if she did not die at such a young age.

Rhondab said:

She doesn't like the capatilizations

soulpower said:

Great thread!!!, I feel all of these poets. Had the immense pleasure of conversing with Mayo Angelou. I was in college at the time, and even though I was writing and performing at the student college center at the time, I wasn't REALLY serious my stuff, because it so, i'd gladly given her one of my pieces to read.

Anyway, Mayo has a strong powerful presence. To me, her tone and the way she speaks is poetic.

Giovanni's erotic literature is super HOT!!! I've grown to really love her stuff.

And who doesn't know that The Last Poets ain't nuttin to play with.

Piet Hein


But still almost no1 knows that this Brilliant Bipolar mind
did this.

http://www.fritzhansen.co...iography=1

Piet Hein was neither an architect nor a furniture designer - but a philosopher, poet, mathematician etc. He created the Superellipse as a new oval shape for the Sergel's Square in Stockholm.

In cooperation with the Swedish designer, Bruno Mathsson, he later used the shape for the Superellipse table which Fritz Hansen put in production in 1968.



Its MayB some truth in what Tao Ce Ching said:

The creativ mind creates - and then 4gets.

In this manner it will last 4 ever.

(my free translation - cant B bothered 2 look it up)

sonia sanchez
cornelius eady
rita dove
lucille clifton
ai
d.j. renegade
toi derricotte
elizabeth alexander
v.j.

and all of my fellow d.c. poets that don't get enough love.

Katherine Dunham, should be recognized on so many levels.

Who's the fuckin red-neck voting less stars etc?

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,­-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream other-wise,
We wear the mask!
---

Paul Laurence Dunbar

---

AbucahX said:

Michael Eric Dyson,Henry Louis Gates,Cornell West,Randall RObinson&Tony Brown get much Props from me among so many that have Enriched my Mind&Soul with there On Point Words of Wisdom.