Fannie Lou Hamer b. 1917 - d. 1977 Ella Baker b. 1903 – d. 1986
Thoughts for International Women's Day
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
March the 8th is a day that celebrates the struggles of women around the world for justice and equality.
I am sure there will be many diaries here at DKos, and across the blogosphere outlining the history and activities being planned world-wide.
Thinking about it, I wanted to just briefly share with you some of the Sisters who shaped my thinking, who taught me, who influenced my life trajectory; who I worked with, or struggled along side of, or who I read avidly as I grew as a feminist. I didn't have to leave the US to find women who represented a rainbow of color and community.
This is taken from a slide show I use in class to introduce my students to radical women of color who may not always be included or thought of as part of the second wave women's movement. I've written about other women I admire in past diaries. These are women who were or still are involved in activism - organizing, mobilizing, using song, or books or poems or just leading the daily battle against the multiple injustices we confronted, and continue to fight for.
So - though I'm not known for photo diaries (grin) I'll keep the text pretty short and provide links for further reading. We can talk more in comments about the women who shaped your own thoughts and practice.
Let's celebrate!
Fannie Lou Hamer
“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired”
Fannie Lou Hamer (born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader.
She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant activist of civil rights.
Ella Baker
Ella Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946. Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South. In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship.
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service. Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist the new student activists because she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. Miss Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -- SNCC -- was born.
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes…
I'm a woman who speaks in a voice
and I must be heard
At times I can be quite difficult,
I'll bow to no man's word”
Ella’s Song – a tribute to Ella Baker Sweet Honey in the Rock
Lyrics and music Bernice Johnson Reagon 1981
A short clip on Ella Baker by Duke University Professor William Chafe
Yuri Kochiyama
"Remember that consciousness is power.
Consciousness is education and knowledge.
Consciousness is becoming aware.
It is the perfect vehicle for students.
Tomorrow’s world is yours to build."
Yuri Kochiyama (1921- ) is a grassroots civil rights activist who has involved herself in a wide range of issues from international political prisoner rights, nuclear disarmament, and Japanese redress for World War II internment. In the 1940s Yuri Kochiyama and her family were one of the many Japanese Americans to be sent to internment camps following the bombing at Pearl Harbor. Several years later she saw many similarities between how the Japanese had been treated in the camps and how many minority groups, especially blacks, were treated in the U.S. at the time. For more than sixty years afterwards Yuri Kochiyama has been an enthusiastic activist and a key supporter of many civil rights groups: in the 1960s she was a member of the Harlem Parents Committee organizing protests for more street lights in her neighborhood, and in 1977 she and 29 others from the Puerto Rican group the Young Lords stormed the Statue of Liberty to bring attention to the issue of Puerto Rican independence. Perhaps most famously, Yuri Kochiyama was a close friend and associate of Malcolm X, and was by his side at his assassination in 1965.
Amy Goodman interview with Yuri
Communist Party USA
Charlene Mitchell
Charlene Mitchell (Charlene Alexander Mitchell born c. 1930) is an African American international socialist, feminist, labor and civil rights activist. Formerly a member of the Communist Party USA which she joined at 16, she now belongs to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
Mitchell stood as a third-party candidate in the United States presidential election, 1968, and was the first African-American woman to run for President of the United States. She represented the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and her running mate was Michael "Mike" Zagarell, the National Youth Director of the party and at 23 years old, younger than the required age to hold office. They were only on the ballot in two states. Mitchell's brother and sister-in-law Franklin and Kendra Alexander had also been active in the party.
Angela Davis
“To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women. ”
“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society”
Women of the Black Panther Party
Kathleen Cleaver
When Kathleen Cleaver, the first woman on the Central Committee of the Black Panther Party was asked by a reporter about the role of women in the organization, she snapped back “No one ever asks me what the role of men in revolution is!”
Two thirds of the Panthers were women.
http://www.eroseffect.com/...
Elaine Brown
Elaine Brown (born March 2, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther leader who is based in Oakland, California.[1] She is a former chairperson of the Black Panther Party. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a founder of Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice.
Elaine was the BPP folk-singer and many of us were inspired by her lyrics.
Seize the Time
Afeni Shakur
Afeni Shakur Davis (born Alice Faye Williams: January 22, 1947) is an American music businesswoman, philanthropist, former political activist and ex-Black Panther. She is the mother of the late Tupac Shakur. She acted as her own criminal defense attorney after being accused of taking part in numerous bombings as a member of the Panther 21.
Poet activists
Audre Lorde
“It is not our differences that divide us.
It is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences. ”
Nikki Giovanni
“There are two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave. ”
Nikki Giovanni's "Woman Poem"
Sonia Sanchez
''... in order to be a true revolutionary, you must understand love. Love, sacrifice, and death.''
''The black artist is dangerous. Black art controls the "Negro's" reality, negates negative influences, and creates positive images.''
Women of the Young Lords Party
Iris - Education Denise - Information Lulu - Defense Nydia - Health
Women of the YLP formed a Women’s caucus, and fought to change the platform and program of the Party which said machismo should be revolutionary and not oppressive.
For us "revolutionary machismo" was an oxymoron. We fought and won the battle to change the Party platform to “We want equality for women – down with machismo and male chauvanism”.
Out of the YLP Women's Caucus was born the YLP Gay and Lesbian caucus, which revolutionized transgender activist Sylvia Rivera
“I’m not missing a minute of this, it’s the revolution.” --Regarding the Stonewall Riots
Sylvia did not speak of equality solely for trans people or queer people for her life experiences on the street formed a very sharp recognition of the intersectionality of oppressions and oppressive systems. As a Hispanic, Sylvia identified with the revolutionary groups of that time, the Young Lords and the Black Panthers. Though GLF was highly conflicted regarding their association with these revolutionary groups, Sylvia recognized the connections and marched with both groups as well as attending the 1971 People’s Revolutionary Convention and actually was given a five minute “hearing” at this convention with Panther leader Huey Newton. Sylvia constantly pushed the political boundaries of the gay liberation movement and worked closely with the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, incarcerated youth, homeless youth, and the rights of sex workers and on and on.
Frances Beal
We must begin to understand that a revolution entails not only the willingness to lay our lives on the firing line and get killed. In some ways, this is an easy commitment to make. To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day patterns." - Francis Beal
Frances M. Beal (born January 13, 1940 Binghamton, New York) is a Black feminist and a peace and justice political activist.After her father's death, she moved to St. Albans, an integrated neighborhood in Queens. She married James Beal; they had two children. They lived in France, from 1959 to 1966. In 1968, she co-founded the Black Women's Liberation Committee of SNCC. She wrote "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black & Female" in 1969. She moved to California, and she was as associate editor of The Black Scholar and wrote for the San Francisco Bay View. She lives in Oakland.
Black Women's Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female
W.A.R.N Women of All Red Nations
Madonna Thunderhawk
The best-known Native American women's organization of the 1970s was Women of All Red Nations (WARN). WARN was initiated in 1978 by women, many of whom were also members of the American Indian Movement which was founded in 1968 by Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, and Mary Jane Wilson, an Anishinabe activist. (12) WARN's activism included fighting sterilization in public health service hospitals, suing the U.S. government for attempts to sell Pine Ridge water in South Dakota to corporations, and networking with indigenous people in Guatemala and Nicaragua. (13) WARN reflected a whole generation of Native American women activists who had been leaders in the takeover of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973, on the Pine Ridge reservation (1973-76)
Black Feminist Theory
“One of the greatest gifts of Black feminism to ourselves has been to make it a little easier simply to be Black and female.”
Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith is an African-American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States.
In 1975 Smith reorganized the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization to establish the Combahee River Collective. As a socialist Black feminist organization the collective emphasized the intersectionality of racial, gender, heterosexist, and class oppression in the lives of Blacks and other women of color. Additionally, the collective aggressively worked on revolutionary issues such as “reproductive rights, rape, prison reform, sterilization abuse, violence against women, health care, and racism within the white women’s movement,” explains Beverly Guy-Sheftall in her introduction to Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-Feminist Thought.
Chicana Feminism
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua
“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react. ”
“I change myself – I change the world ”
Gloria b. 1942 d. 2004
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 – May 15, 2004) was considered a leading scholar of Chicano cultural theory and Queer theory. She loosely based her most well-known book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border and incorporated her lifelong feelings of social and cultural marginalization into her works.
She has made contributions to ideas of "feminism" and has contributed to the field of cultural theory/Chicana and queer theory.[4] One of her major contributions was her introduction to United States academic audiences of the term mestizaje, meaning a state of being beyond binary ("either-or") conception, into academic writing and discussion. In her theoretical works, Anzaldúa calls for a "new mestiza," which she describes as an individual aware of her conflicting and meshing identities and uses these "new angles of vision" to challenge binary thinking in the Western world. The "new mestiza" way of thinking is illustrated in postcolonial feminism.
To close this celebration of of the sisters that shaped my life I can't think of any better voices than those of Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Testimony Lyrics
Sweet Honey in the Rock
There's godlike
And warlike
And strong
Like only some show
And there's sad like
And madlike
And had
Like we know
But by my life be I spirit
And by my heart be I woman
And by my eyes be I open
And by my hands be I whole
They say slowly
Brings the least shock
But no matter how slow I walk
There are traces
Empty spaces
And doors and doors of locks
But by my life be I spirit
And by my heart be I woman
And by my eyes be I open
And by my hands be I whole
You young ones
You're the next ones
And I hope you choose it well
Though you try hard
You may fall prey
To the jaded jewel
But by your lives be you spirit
And by your hearts be you women
And by your eyes be you open
And by your hands be you whole
Listen, there are waters
Hidden from us
In the maze we find them still
We'll take you to them
You take your young ones
May they take their own in turn
But by our lives be we spirit
And by our hearts be we women
And by our eyes be we open
And by our hands be we whole
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Does Hollywood discriminate against young black actors? LA Times: Young Blacks in Hollywood.
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Shortly after the Oscars ended Sunday, Samuel L. Jackson sent an e-mail to a Times reporter wondering why no black men had been chosen to present awards on the film world's biggest stage.
"It's obvious there's not ONE Black male actor in Hollywood that's able to read a teleprompter, or that's 'hip enuf,' for the new academy demographic!" Jackson wrote. "In the Hollywood I saw tonite, I don't exist nor does Denzel, Eddie, Will, Jamie, or even a young comer like Anthony Mackie!"
Jackson may be on to something, at least when it comes to the young comers.
There is still a sizable number of black actors in Hollywood with box-office clout and meaty roles, a point that will be underscored when the NAACP hands out its annual Image Awards in Los Angeles Friday night. Will Smith is the biggest movie star in the world, a title he's held now for several years, and Denzel Washington remains at the peak of his box-office powers. B
But most of the prominent male black stars sit on the other side of 40. The best known of the next generation -- say, Derek Luke (36), Chiwetel Eijofor (33), Idris Elba (39) and Mackie (31) -- are not only less influential, they're not nearly as popular in their 30s as the previous crop was at their age. (Washington, for instance, had already won an Oscar and made "Glory," "Malcolm X" and "Philadelphia" before he hit the big 4-0.)
That's not because any of these actors aren't capable of pulling off a "Malcolm X" or a "Philadelphia," of course. It's because they're not given the chance. Mackie has one of the more substantive studio roles for a younger black actor in a while as Matt Damon's guardian angel in this weekend's "The Adjustment Bureau." But it's hardly the role of a lifetime.
"It's frustrating that the movies I want to make I haven't been able to make," Mackie told 24 Frames. "Orlando Bloom was given 15 opportunities after 'Lord of the Rings.' Black men are given no opportunities."
Race in Hollywood is a subject close to Mackie's heart. He's studiously avoided the "Who's Your Caddys" and "Big Momma's Houses" of the film world, going instead to indies such as "The Hurt Locker" and, almost as frequently, to the stage.
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This article starts out discussing the "controversial" selection of Idris Elba to plat Heimdall in "Thor", then continues with a good discussion of the job market for black actors. Hollywood Reporter: “It’s so ridiculous,” Idris Elba says as The Hollywood Reporter magazine looks at colorblind casting and the shrinking roles for African-American actors before Friday's NAACP Image Awards.
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When Kenneth Branagh cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in the upcoming summer tentpole Thor, a furious debate erupted among fanboys, with some insisting it was wrong for a black man to play a Nordic god.
But the London-born actor has no patience for the debate. "It's so ridiculous," he said Feb. 24 at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J.
"We have a man [Thor] who has a flying hammer and wears horns on his head. And yet me being an actor of African descent playing a Norse god is unbelievable? I mean, Cleopatra was played by Elizabeth Taylor, and Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley."
Beyond that artistic defense, though, there is an even more basic reason black actors welcome colorblind casting: There is a ceiling on the amount of business black-themed movies can achieve, so the opportunities for black actors and actresses remain limited unless they can also claim parts in mainstream entertainment.
Black-themed movies have established a niche where they can do significant business at the domestic box office, but because they don't travel well overseas, there's a limited number of them.
Tyler Perry has ushered in a new era of black genre pics and provided exposure for numerous African-American stars. His movies have been a boon for Lionsgate, but they also demonstrate the math. Perry's films have grossed a combined $469 million domestically, with an average gross of $52 million.
Other companies such as Fox Searchlight and Screen Gems have also entered that market. Most recently, Fox successfully relaunched the Martin Lawrence Big Momma franchise, casting newcomer Brandon T. Jackson opposite Lawrence.
Screen Gems' Obsessed, in which Elba starred opposite Beyonce and white actress Ali Larter, succeeded in playing to black and white audiences, but -- like other genre movies -- it hit a ceiling in terms of total gross, earning $68.3 million domestically, and $5.6 million overseas.
Not long after Obsessed, Screen Gems teamed with Chris Rock to remake the British comedy Death at a Funeral -- but with a mostly black cast. The film also starred James Marsden and Luke Wilson, upping its chances of crossing over. Still, Funeral did only so-so business, grossing $42.7 million domestically and $6.3 million overseas, mostly in the U.K.
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A report indicates that black voters who don't support same-sex marriage will vote for candidates who do. This spells opportunity for white LGBT activists, if they're willing to take heed. The Root: Black Voters Are Pragmatic About Gay Marriage
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Tuesday's Washington Post article examining the response by African-American voters to President Barack Obama's new Defense of Marriage Act policy reveals what many in the black community already know: When it comes to the ballot box, marriage equality is mostly a nonissue. In interviews with black pastors, pollsters, churchgoers and professors, African-American voters explain that economic and social-justice platforms are of far greater concern than LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues.
Of course there are many African Americans -- particularly the religious -- for whom same-sex marriage will always be anathema. But the message is clear: Even voters who don't support marriage equality still appear willing to elect politicians who do.
"Black voters are well aware that we're dealing with complex issues that are not always a zero-sum game," says J. Kameron Carter, associate professor of theology and black church studies at Duke University. "What this article illustrates is that black voters are as sophisticated as anyone else," he adds, "and it's time the larger LGBT leadership began to recognize it."
While the Post article suggests this sophistication, its writers fail to give it the attention it deserves. Doing so would have offered not only a more nuanced analysis of DOMA's impact on black voters but also an entirely new take on their relationship with the larger LGBT movement itself.
The Misunderstood Black Vote
And the Post revisits -- yet again -- the blaming of black churchgoers for the passage of California's Proposition 8 during the 2008 election cycle. Indeed, even before that November vote, prominent white members of the LGBT community vilified religious African Americans for supposedly voting with a stridently anti-LGBT agenda. Indeed, church attendance has been called the main cause of black voters' support for Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.
But the truth is actually reversed. Focused far more on job creation, health care and education than on gay marriage, black voters aren't supporting conservative candidates simply because they oppose LGBT rights. Instead, they are voting for progressive pro-LGBT candidates -- despite disagreeing with their pro-LGBT platforms.
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The jobless rate among black college graduates is nearly double that of whites. Why? The Root: College Degrees Won't Shield Blacks From Unemployment
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For years, Americans have been told that going to college was the best protection against unemployment. That hasn't been the case for African Americans during the Great Recession, with a jobless rate nearly double that of their white counterparts. And experts say the gap could widen in the slow recovery.
Black Americans have long suffered the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in the country, and this recession has only exacerbated a long-standing divergence.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate for black Americans in January was 15.7 percent, compared with 8 percent for whites. Although a recent report shows that the unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.9 percent in February, the Economic Policy Institute -- a nonpartisan economic think tank -- projects that national unemployment for blacks will reach a 25-year high this year, with the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent.
Black college graduates have not been spared.
At the end of 2010, black Americans, 25 years old and older, with a college education had an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent, while the rate for white college graduates was 4.2 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Other minority groups, such as Asian college graduates and Hispanics, hover a shade over 5.5 percent, while the rate for blacks was expected to continue climbing.
Cary Fraser, a professor of labor and industrial relations at Penn State University, believes that several factors contribute to high unemployment in the black community.
First, as corporations continue to relocate thousands of jobs to lower-cost markets in more rural areas, many of the opportunities that were once available to black workers in metropolitan centers are now nonexistent.
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Politicians -- and U.S. immigration policy -- can expect a good tongue-lashing in the calypsos, but the 225-year-old celebration is mostly about fun. The Root: It's Carnival Time Again in Trinidad
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French settlers introduced Carnival to Trinidad in 1785, staging annual pre-Lenten masquerade balls. Their African slaves quickly adopted it, staging their own pre-Lenten celebrations but mainly mimicking and mocking their French masters with elaborate costumes and dancing to the beat of drums. They also composed their own songs -- the first calypsos -- for the occasion, employing clever double entendres to lampoon their masters.
So cleverly was this done that some French masters actually enjoyed the calypsos, never realizing that they were the targets of scorn and vituperation. In no time at all, the annual pre-Lenten fete became a favorite festival among African slaves and quickly spread to all parts of the twin-island state of Trinidad and Tobago.
Today, Trinidad Carnival -- which officially takes to the streets this year at 5 a.m. on Monday, March 7 -- is celebrated as a national festival in which all sections of the community take part, as do many tourists from North America and Europe. Masquerade, or "mas," as it is now commonly known, remains a key feature of the festival. Hundreds of bands with thousands of participants annually parade down the streets, with each band adopting a masquerade theme -- North American Indians, the British Royal Court, denizens of the undersea world, astronauts, African warriors, Egyptian pharaohs.
Many of these costumes are elaborately structured and take months to put together. Bandleaders open mas camps, where the costumes are put on display; would-be masqueraders visit these camps and pay for their costumes when they eventually decide which mas they will be playing in the streets this Carnival.
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Kevin Lyttle - Turn Me On
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
While getting my pound of coffee at my favorite shop, I ran into an acquaintence who runs a fairly well known polling outfit in Oakland. He's been to the house for a few soirees and I see him around occasionally. He's part of Progressive politics in the Bay area, his litany is that he's doing what he can to defeat the Republicans. In my conversations with him, though, I get that he's had no real experience with being poor, or a minority, or a target. He asked me what I've been doing, how my writing is going.
I mentioned my editorial duties here at Black Kos and he was taken aback.
"So you have an unabiding interest and affiliation with being black?" he asked in an accusatory tone. I get that a lot, mostly from white men, interestingly enough; who are surprised when they see my niesei step-father, my latin nieces or any other number of immediate or extended family members.
"I know I'll never be black enough," I smiled
And it's true, I will never know what it is to be black, but my daughters-in-law have been black all their lives, they know. My grandkids are black and they are finding out.
But I am a poet. I feel with every tender kiss of my heart and soul. I think with every synaptical electrical connection warping at literally, the speed of light.
I build with these hands. I caress with these hands and I will walk with you and you and you until we can walk no more; and then I will walk again.
I will never be black enough, I won't be asian or latin or gay or woman or infirmed enough; but my love for all on this luminous sphere is just the right measure.
American Roots: Moral Associations
1 Kinship:
Is embarrassing the wind,
Like dead black boys,
Falling down from the trees,
Then downstream–
On their knees,
Blood like,
Like a rich nation.
2 Metaphor:
Becomes humiliating,
And clean,
Ticking like a ripe machine.
Do not
Bend,
Fold,
Or mutilate me–
This is your future speaking.
3 The air smells so metaphysical
We have accused it–
Of smog,
And lost manhood,
Then all ritual.
4 Whoever wrote:
A view is a mountain speaking
But left the introduction
For the snow,
And accused silence
Of its soul.
5 The whole nation:
Is a stanza of blackness,
A huge white whale,
Faith in space
(Like the newspapers),
And the quiet insistence
We have peace,
And it's your world, brother.
-- Primus St. John
Black Kos Late Night Music in The Justice Department will feature Gil Scot Heron tonight.
This should be required listening in the schools. But so should Malcolm X. Since I can't count on the schools; and really, who should only count on the schools, no matter how good; my grandkids come here to Black Kos for their supplemental and extended educations.
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The Front Porch is now open. Pull up a chair, or grab a seat on the glider and chat with us for a while. Happy Mardi Gras!!!!!
Creole cookin' on the table. Fat Tuesday today!