Marvin,
I still forgot to give you your glasses, I was trying to explain so much as usual, as I find it’s easy for people to be misguided for lack of facts they don’t have. E.g. Brother Editor didn’t come to The Black Scholar as a poet; I don’t think he’d ever published a poem so much as in a student newspaper at that point. But even if he had been Baraka, he didn’t use poetry to build The Black Scholar. He might have helped to build a poet or two in time, through The Black Scholar, but their poetry did not build The Black Scholar. The Black Scholar hit the ground running with the first issue, with essentially all of the articles obtained by me. They didn’t know him and there was not yet The Black Scholar to know. As I said this morning, Julia got it in Newsweek through friends she had met in her job as Director of Education for the soon-to-be-opened Oakland Museum. He didn’t build The Black Scholar, The Black Scholar made him, if we can say he ever was fully made, i.e., a made man, he is certainly not a self-made man, but a man who came to The Black Scholar on the make, with nothing beyond the tools of an unknown English teacher.
I’ll hang on to the glasses. By the way, I didn’t mean for you guys to gut my brown supply chest next to the white file cabinet. I guess its contents were so scarce and rumpled you thought it was something rare.
Nathan
Doc can still throw a punch. He turns 80 April 9, same birthday as another "Bad Nigguh"
Paul Robeson. April 9 is also the birthday of a Black Power Baby, 2.0, Ras Baraka, the next Mayor of Newark, NJ. photo Marvin X
The article below begins with the lie that Robert Chrisman, RIP,founded Black Scholar, when in fact Dr. Nathan Hare was the founder.
Dr. Hare on the Black Scholar
Marvin,
One other thing, on the issue of whether the journal was black if all of its support or money wasn’t -- and I said that would be determined by its content (by which I was including its ideology) – I should exlain that it is true that Bob was black (or half-black, in that his father was white – doesn’t matter that both of his wives were white, as Julia complained to the New York Times, to Charlayne Hunter, whose husband, unknown to Julia, was also white!—so he was half black but he was not black black.
Indeed, the white guy, Allen Ross, and I got along well and even saw eye to eye on most things. It was Bob Chrisman that both of us had problems with, indeed as I said this morning, Al quit before I did and frequently asked me to work with him with The Black Scholar Book Club, before the died. It was Julia’s idea to call Al’s widow, who came to our apartment with her and Al’s daughter and the three of them urged me to leave The Black Scholar, over my protests that I didn’t have time, that I had to finish my dissertation for the psychology Ph.D. in order to graduate in August. They said if I got out now that would give me more time in time to finish my thesis .
That wasn’t true, but I didn’t finish it on time. I’d already planned to leave The Black Scholar once I’d graduated, before Allen Ross left. But by the time I left, the three persons on the board were Marxists and we’d argue over whether some articles should be in the journal. That included black nationalist like Haki Madhubuti, though his article was published. And after I left there was even a forum to rebut it, but perhaps causing the uninitiated to think blackness was being highlighted if anything, and giving Haki some props to boot -- so it’s easy to be misled. Bob even balked at publishing maverick Marxists like Eldridge Cleaver when he was in Algiers and out of sorts with the Panthers and the movement and a black professor in Canada, who had a divergent view – momentarily forget his name, he wasn’t famous or anything, and we did publish him, but increasingly I was losing out, once Gloria started siding with the other two, I guess partly because I had pulled away to a considerable degree in the course of the psychology degree.
So the Marxist thing was just one of the reasons I left. Plus they were Marxists but acting independent of other Marxists, so far as I know, with the other two basically conceding to Bob and his caucusing with them. So actually Bob took it over. He chose Robert Allen, with my consent, as I wasn’t expecting or even cut out for no screed. Neither Al nor I wanted to hurt The Black Scholar. It was suggested to me that I sue. I could have sued but with the shaky finances of the journal it could have crumbled. What I would have done if I’m doing it now was go with Al Ross with the Black Scholar Book Club as he had left with and implored me continuously to join him, and I also could have taken the lecture bureau, which was Bob idea trying to get part of my plenteous lecture fees at the time, but I was the one who knew how it worked and set it up. Indeed one thing I came up with, Classified Ads, Bob at first opposed.
I told you how we turned the corner by refusing Signet’s first printing of 105,000 copies of “The Best of the Black Scholar” over the size of the author’s cut per book, and wound up getting a bigger cut per book on two books, with 4,000 and 3,000 copies printed of each before they went out of print. There we turned the corner at the door of the big-time into the upper echelons of mediocrity. People who would build a dune in the sand disdain skylifts.
Come to think of it I don’t know that Bob ever built anything else. If you don’t count the poem or two after he was at The Black Scholar and once took a leave of a month or so to work on some writing. He wasn’t missed but came back without the writing done, whatever it was. I mean the brother wrote an article in Scanlon’s, one of the few ever published anywhere, including in The Black Scholar, I remember one in the shortlved Scanlon’s called “Ecology is a Racist Shuck.” You don’t say.
I almost simultaneously did an article for The Black Scholar called “Black Ecology,” which was translated into several languages around the world. Did he build that article. Indeed, I used to write little publisher’s statements and initial them. One day Al told me Bob opposed me doing them, so I stopped doing them, as I had other things to do. If you look at them you may see they set the tone. I interviewed people like Muhammad Ali (stayed a weekend in his home and did roadwork with him one morning when he was living outside Philadelphia to do the interview., and because I didn’t sign them when Robert Hauser wrote the biography of Ali he attributed it to The Black Scholar and didn’t mention me. Queen Mother Moore was interviewed in my apartment (Bob didn’t know her) and I also paid my way to Detroit while I was on a speaking engagement somewhere and interviewed Robert Williams shortly after he got back from China.
Nathan
Dr. Hare on the Black Scholar
Marvin,
One other thing, on the issue of whether the journal was black if all of its support or money wasn’t -- and I said that would be determined by its content (by which I was including its ideology) – I should exlain that it is true that Bob was black (or half-black, in that his father was white – doesn’t matter that both of his wives were white, as Julia complained to the New York Times, to Charlayne Hunter, whose husband, unknown to Julia, was also white!—so he was half black but he was not black black.
Indeed, the white guy, Allen Ross, and I got along well and even saw eye to eye on most things. It was Bob Chrisman that both of us had problems with, indeed as I said this morning, Al quit before I did and frequently asked me to work with him with The Black Scholar Book Club, before the died. It was Julia’s idea to call Al’s widow, who came to our apartment with her and Al’s daughter and the three of them urged me to leave The Black Scholar, over my protests that I didn’t have time, that I had to finish my dissertation for the psychology Ph.D. in order to graduate in August. They said if I got out now that would give me more time in time to finish my thesis .
That wasn’t true, but I didn’t finish it on time. I’d already planned to leave The Black Scholar once I’d graduated, before Allen Ross left. But by the time I left, the three persons on the board were Marxists and we’d argue over whether some articles should be in the journal. That included black nationalist like Haki Madhubuti, though his article was published. And after I left there was even a forum to rebut it, but perhaps causing the uninitiated to think blackness was being highlighted if anything, and giving Haki some props to boot -- so it’s easy to be misled. Bob even balked at publishing maverick Marxists like Eldridge Cleaver when he was in Algiers and out of sorts with the Panthers and the movement and a black professor in Canada, who had a divergent view – momentarily forget his name, he wasn’t famous or anything, and we did publish him, but increasingly I was losing out, once Gloria started siding with the other two, I guess partly because I had pulled away to a considerable degree in the course of the psychology degree.
So the Marxist thing was just one of the reasons I left. Plus they were Marxists but acting independent of other Marxists, so far as I know, with the other two basically conceding to Bob and his caucusing with them. So actually Bob took it over. He chose Robert Allen, with my consent, as I wasn’t expecting or even cut out for no screed. Neither Al nor I wanted to hurt The Black Scholar. It was suggested to me that I sue. I could have sued but with the shaky finances of the journal it could have crumbled. What I would have done if I’m doing it now was go with Al Ross with the Black Scholar Book Club as he had left with and implored me continuously to join him, and I also could have taken the lecture bureau, which was Bob idea trying to get part of my plenteous lecture fees at the time, but I was the one who knew how it worked and set it up. Indeed one thing I came up with, Classified Ads, Bob at first opposed.
I told you how we turned the corner by refusing Signet’s first printing of 105,000 copies of “The Best of the Black Scholar” over the size of the author’s cut per book, and wound up getting a bigger cut per book on two books, with 4,000 and 3,000 copies printed of each before they went out of print. There we turned the corner at the door of the big-time into the upper echelons of mediocrity. People who would build a dune in the sand disdain skylifts.
Come to think of it I don’t know that Bob ever built anything else. If you don’t count the poem or two after he was at The Black Scholar and once took a leave of a month or so to work on some writing. He wasn’t missed but came back without the writing done, whatever it was. I mean the brother wrote an article in Scanlon’s, one of the few ever published anywhere, including in The Black Scholar, I remember one in the shortlved Scanlon’s called “Ecology is a Racist Shuck.” You don’t say.
I almost simultaneously did an article for The Black Scholar called “Black Ecology,” which was translated into several languages around the world. Did he build that article. Indeed, I used to write little publisher’s statements and initial them. One day Al told me Bob opposed me doing them, so I stopped doing them, as I had other things to do. If you look at them you may see they set the tone. I interviewed people like Muhammad Ali (stayed a weekend in his home and did roadwork with him one morning when he was living outside Philadelphia to do the interview., and because I didn’t sign them when Robert Hauser wrote the biography of Ali he attributed it to The Black Scholar and didn’t mention me. Queen Mother Moore was interviewed in my apartment (Bob didn’t know her) and I also paid my way to Detroit while I was on a speaking engagement somewhere and interviewed Robert Williams shortly after he got back from China.
Nathan
Dr. Hare teaches us the Fictive theory, i.e., everything the white man and black man says is fiction, a lie, until proven to be a fact. Dr. Hare's contribution to the Black Scholar has been erased from history by revisionists and their sycophants. Thank Allah we have his archives to put the record straight. Be careful, next these muddle headed intellectuals will tell you Malcolm X founded the Nation of Islam.--Marvin X
The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research
The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research is an internationally acclaimed journal founded by Dr. Robert Chrisman and co-edited with Dr. Robert L. Allen. The Black Scholar began publication in 1969 and has been hailed by the New York Times as "a journal in which the writings of many of today's finest black thinkers may be viewed."
The entire spectrum of black political and cultural thought appears in the pages of The Black Scholar, represented by leading writers such as Clarence Lusane, Melba Joyce Boyd, Manning Marable and Maulana Karenga. Each issue focuses on a subject of major concern in the African American community. Education, black political empowerment, social movements, the multicultural debate, black women's activism, the crisis of the black male, the Ebonics debate, the Million Man March, the New South Africa and many other fundamental subjects have all been probed in the pages of The Black Scholar, which often receives national and international acclaim. There's an almost-complete list of The Black Scholarback issues near the end of this page.
Among The Black Scholar's other contributors have been Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, Julian Bond, Shirley Chisholm,Audre Lorde, Max Roach, Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Source: The Black Scholar Web site. Note: There is a section for comments, suggestions, or corrections at the bottom of the page.
Robert Chrisman - Founding Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Robert Chrisman is a poet and essayist who's been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley,Chair of the Black Studies Department of the University of Nebraska at Omaha until mid-2005 and the principal organizer of that department's Malcolm X Festival for three years. Dr. Chrisman's current research interests include: the impact of modernism on Afro-American authors of the twentieth century; and works of the Afro-Cuban poets,Nicolas Guillen and Nancy Morejon. He published Pan-Africanism (1974), as co-compiler with Nathan Hare, Court of Appeal: The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of Thomas vs. Hill (1992), and Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry, as co-editor with Laurence Goldstein (2001). This lens has an Amazon module for Dr. Chrisman's books that are currently in print. Dr. Chrisman also was co-compiler (with Dr. Hare) of Contemporary Black Thought: The Best from The Black Scholar (1974), which is out of print.
Robert L. Allen - Senior Editor
Robert L. Allen is Professor of African American Studies & Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of interest include social movements, labor studies, and race & gender studies. Dr. Allen is the author of Black Awakening in Capitalist America (1990); Reluctant Reformers: The Impact of Racism on Social Movement in the U.S. (1983); The Port Chicago Mutiny (1989, republished 2006); Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America (with Herb Boyd, reprinted 1996); Strong in the Struggle (the life of labor leader Lee Brown), Honoring Sergeant Carter: A Family's Journey to Uncover the Truth About an American Hero (2004); and A Guide to Black Power in America: An Historical Analysis (1970). Dr. Allen currently is researching the life and work of C.L. Dellums, a leader of theBrotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union. This lens has an Amazon module below for Dr. Allen's books and other published writings.
Technorati Profile Technorati Tags: The Black Scholar African-American African-American History Black HistoryAfrican-American Studies Black Studies
The Black Scholar 40th Anniversary Celebration - November 19 and 20, 2009
The Black Scholar celebrated 40 years of continuous publishing with a conference hosted by the Department of African American Studies, UC Berkeley, at the Lippman Room, Barrows Hall.The Two-Day Conference Featured:
- Charles P. Henry hosted a panel, "Barak Obama: the First Year." Prof. Henry is Chair, Dept. of African American Studies, UC Berkeley, and author of Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations (New York University Press, 2007)
- Ernest Allen, Jr. Professor of African American History at the W. E. B. Du Bois Dept. of Afro-American Studieds, digital archivist and filmmaker, presented a feature-length documentary film, "Look Back in Wonder," on the formation of the Dept. at UMass. Amherst and its highly successful Ph.D. program.
- Melba Joyce Boyd, Chair, Dept. of Africana Studies, Wayne State University, Detroit, offered a panel on the topic, "The progressive black artist — poetry, music, fiction and film."
- Special performance by the John Handy Quartet.
- Awards Luncheon
From Vol. 39, No. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2009.)
Vol. 38, No. 1: The Candidacy of Barack Obama
Guest Editor: Dr. Charles P. Henry, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Preface to the Spring 2008 issue:The campaign of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States provides a rare crystallization of U.S. historical, political, and social movement. Issues of racism, gender, generation, and national identity are reticulated through the prism of Obama's candidacy. We have dedicated a special issue of The Black Scholar to this subject. Dr. Charles P. Henry, Professor and Chair of the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading black political scientist, has served as Guest Editor and assembled major scholars for this effort.
As Charles Henry points out in his article, "Obama '08 -- Articulate and Clean," Obama's march to the Presidency has been on a road cleared by purposeful black political activity and leadership in modern times, commencing with the Voter Rights Act of 1965, the 1972 presidential candidacy of Cong. Shirley Chisholm and the l984 and 1988 campaigns of Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Ronald Walters seizes precisely upon the timing of Obama and the historical moment in his essay, "Obama's Edge: Understanding Nation Time," as the black candidacy moved from a flank movement into central command of U.S. consciousness in 2008. Walters notes the juxtaposition of Obamas' new vision with the degradation of the U.S. population, resources, and morale by George W. Bush's presidency. With the phrase, "our time has come," Obama tapped into the conscious and unconscious political will of alienated Americans.
The international aspects of Barack Obama's candidacy are treated in Clarence Lusane's "We Must Lead the World: The Obama Doctrine and the Re-branding of U.S. Hegemony," which assesses both the status quo postures of Obama foreign policy, as well as the prospects for change that his transparency and legacy of Black political vision offer.
Central to this candidacy has been the competition with Senator Hillary Clinton, herself an historical first. A leading feminist, Alice Walker's "Lest We Forget: an Open Letter to My Sisters," traces her own personal history anti finds in it the rational for black political movement and supporting Obama's candidacy,
We consider methodology as Diane Pinderhughes explores the complex intersection of gender, race, and class interest in "Intersectionality: Race and Gender in the 2008 Presidential Nomination Campaign." Ronald Williams' II article, "Barack Obama and the Complicated Boundaries of Blackness" offers a review of the literature. Williams explores the ambiguities of African American identities, with emphasis upon conditions and characteristics of indigenous and non-indigenous African Americans.
We are also pleased to publish a major text by Barack Obama, his address delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, "To Form a More Perfect Union," a forthright discussion of racism and its effects, as it impedes the full realization of American democracy. Obama reaffirms his belief in "the more perfect union of the Constitution," a belief which comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. ... (and which) also comes from my own American story." We hope you enjoy this issue. As always, feel free to send us a letter with your reactions.
The Editors