2660 Search results for "20 years"

till v. – to labor, as by plowing or harrowing, upon (land) for the raising of crops; cultivate. n. – a drawer, box, or the like, as in a shop or bank, in which money is kept I’ve been thinking about death a lot this year, both personally, with the death of my beloved great-grandmother, […]

  As a youngster my father always told me to never make excuses. He stressed that habitual “excuse making” leads to defeatism. He spoke of defeatism so pejoratively that I began to think it was some sort of plague. When he even uttered the word excuse his face would contort in an ugly cringe as […]

It was the cry heard around the world when 11 year-old Paris Jackson said, “Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine . . . I just want to say I love him so much.” From coast to coast, eyes wept for her sorrow and tears trickled down […]

I’d been waiting for Maxwell’s return for what seemed like forever.  Yesterday, after an eight-year hiatus, he released his fourth studio album, BLACKsummers’ night.  This highly anticipated album is the first installment of a trilogy—the other two albums, which have already been named are set for release in 2010 and 2011.  The second album, blackSUMMERS’ […]

It’s taken about a week for my feelings about the BET Awards to be articulated as something beyond, “I hate Debra Lee,” or “If Harriet Tubman got frequent flyer miles, she’s now really upset there weren’t more blackout dates,” or “Where’s Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey when you need them?”** or “How long before they […]

On June 4, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced Executive Order 11873, which created the federal government’s first affirmative action program. In his speech at Howard University he said, “But there is a second cause - much more difficult to explain, more deeply grounded, more desperate in its force. It is the devastating heritage of long [...]

Like most little black girls growing up in abusive  homes, I dreamed and sometimes daydreamed of being rescued from my reality. I wished I had a fairy godmother who would flick her magical wand singing, “Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. Put ’em together and what have you got bibbidi-bobbidi-boo,” changing my alcoholic father into benevolent king, […]

The pressure is on for Afghani women to predict the gender of the children they give birth to and the pressure is on for those children to be boys.  An Afghani custom that seems to have gone on for years is to dress one young girl in the family as a boy, cut her hair short […]