Each February, via Black History Month, our nation has the opportunity and privilege to reflect on the legacy of Black Americans. From Google Doodles to corporate banks to federal proclamations, reaching far beyond slavery, observing Black History Month allows us to celebrate the substantial contributions that African Americans have made to The United States of America’s history, culture, vibrancy, and soul.
Joshua Johnson has what he calls a “God-shaped hole” in his heart. The death of Pat Robertson helped put it there.
A journalist, former NPR talk-show host and MSNBC news anchor, Johnson didn’t personally know Robertson, a televangelist who founded “The 700 Club” empire and was an influential figure in conservative Republican politics.
On this episode Charles Stephens chats with Dr. Damian Denson about his personal journey to self through 2000’s Atlanta nightlife.
Like most commencement weekends, the mood was festive and upbeat one weekend last month on the stately campus of Carleton College, a small liberal arts school just south of Minneapolis. The graduates, wearing everything from bright dresses and heels to shorts and sneakers beneath their gowns, filed into seats arranged in a broad, grassy field incongruously called The Bald Spot.
Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs joined us to discuss her connection to Audre Lorde. Dr. Gumbs is currently writing a biography of Lorde called "The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde." During this conversation Dr. Gumbs discusses Lorde's connection to Joseph Beam and Essex Hemphill. She also discusses Melvin Dixon's 1992 keynote at the OutWrite Conference "I'll Be Somewhere Listening For My Name."
On a recent Sunday, on an unassuming corner in West Atlanta, an industrial-style gym transformed into a modern-day ashram. There, with the gritty rhymes of rap artists like Yella Beezy blaring in the background, dozens of Black and Brown people contorted their bodies into positions like high dragon, mermaid, and tree pose—reclaiming the ancient eastern art of yoga to find health and a little peace.
Countless people of color start their year with a handful of classic rituals—often a soul food meal, a vision board, and a lofty plan to get a snatched waist. The latter usually leads to a mad dash to the nearest gym—but across Atlanta, fitness professionals are encouraging people of color to add yoga to their list of ways to get summertime fine.
They’re offering “trap yoga”, Christian-themed classes, and even LGBTQ+ friendly practices as they try to woo a community that’s long viewed yoga as unwelcoming to all but the white health elite.
Norris Bumstead Herndon grew up in a shadow as broad as Georgia. Yet he could only live up to his father and society’s expectations by shrinking himself.
“Norris was a young man coming of age and struggling with his homosexual identity,” historian Carole Merritt wrote in her 2002 biography, “The Herndons: An Atlanta Family.”
“With a father who insisted upon a straight and narrow course and in an early 20th-century society that had no tolerance for what it considered deviant, Norris would have to deny himself. He would assume a compromised selfhood, his sexuality arrested, denied, or expressed in secret.”
According to the New York Times, I Was Born This Way, released in 1975, is “the first record to feature lyrics about being an out-and-proud gay man.” At face value that statement is significant, but when you look further, it has a much deeper meaning. Here’s the truth: Charles Valentino (then known by the mononym “Valentino”), a Black gay man, sang the first record to feature lyrics about being out and proud. The lyrics were written by Bunny Jones in 1971, a Black woman. CNP plans to honor the legacy of this groundbreaking song in LIBERATION: Remembering I Was Born This Way—a two-part event kicking off in July.
