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August 3, 2002
Site Seeing
The Life and Death of Robert Johnson 
"Since the 1930s, rumors and legends grew, surrounding Robert Johnson and how he'd sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads, at midnight, in exchange for superior musical abilities. Johnson never actually said that. So how did this association begin?" Short site with some definitive question about legendary blues musician Robert Johnson. Succinct. Pictures would have been nice. T-Neck
Books
Songbird: Maya Angelou takes another look at herself "... Nin and Angelou are both theatrical writers—they use language, often with great aplomb, to describe and glorify a self that is fulfilled only when it is being observed. Both writers, in their early books, were pioneers of self-exposure, willing to turn a spotlight on their own sometimes questionable exploits and emotional shortcomings. While Angelou and Nin tended to be more interested in self-revelation than in politics or the feminist perspective, the unabashed female personae they presented freed many other women writers to open themselves up without shame to the eyes of the world." Hilton Als is much more charitable toward Angelou's work than Wanda Coleman. Her review of "A Song Flung Up to Heaven" in April 2002 resulted in her being banned from a black bookstore in California. People on both sides of the issue were quite upset. The New Yorker
Political Animal
Rosa Parks Laments "We also tend to forget that the Democrats were not merely the party of slavery. They were also the party of Jim Crow, of Segregation, and of "Separate but Equal." They were the party of George Wallace and Bull Connor. They were the party that......up until the 1960s did things like require black voters to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar as a "test" to be registered to vote. Condoleeza Rice, one of President Bush's closest friends and advisors, likes to tell how, when she was growing up in the segregated South, her father became a Republican because the Democrats refused to register him to vote. She's been a proud Republican for most of her life." At last, Condoleeza Rice explained! A fairly informative exchange on the history of African American involvement in the Republican and Democratic parties. For balance, here's a conservative rebuttal of the exchange. Dean's World