Gotham City Soul

So, we're interrupting this regularly scheduled broadcast to have a little fun with history today. If my tone is kind of goofy and flip while I make my point, it is that sometimes I just have to not take things too seriously. So there’s an uproar about the Philadelphia Franklin Institute’s* King Tut Exhibit . Critics claim that the forensic reconstruction is inaccurate, not because of the young king’s features, but because his skin is white. I’m inclined to sigh and say “oh brother, here we go again—it’s just like when people start yelling about Cleopatra being a black woman. She wasn’t a black woman: According to all credible accounts, she was a Macedo nian Greek who became Queen of Egypt, which made her African by default. But at least once a year I get an e mail from someone flying off the handle because whatever latest incarnation of Cleopatra someone has put on the screen (the last one was in the HBO show Rome ) isn’t a brown/dark-skinned woman. She was not a black Af...

So when Don Imus uttered those nasty words earlier this year on his radio show and all hell broke loose, suddenly we found ourselves leapfrogging past the discussion of whether what he said was wrong, illegal, or punishable. Suddenly black people found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to defend their own use of the “n” word. A word white people created to describe us as the lowliest of the low, and one that, for better or worse has been appropriated by black culture. And now we’re told because we call each other that word, everyone is allowed to use it. I'll weigh in on the black use of the word in a future entry. But for now there is one hardcore rule that will never change. Read this carefully because I want you to be clear on how I stand on this: White people are never allowed to use that word in conversation, or out of historical context. Ever. Ever. Much of the finger pointing from mainstream society—and I say mainstream because many black peop...

Although this blog is usually devoted to things New York, today we’re going down South to see a bit of delayed justice done. There are few things in this world that warm the cockles of my heart more than when criminals, particularly homicidal white supremacists, are brought to justice. I was thrilled when in 1994 they finally convicted Byron de la Beckwith , the man who murdered the civil rights activist Medgar Evers (I had a chance to interview his wife Myrlie Evers about that and many others things; one day I’ll post an entry on her and her own remarkable life). The story of Mrs. Ever's decades-long fight for justice was recounted in the 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi. De la Beckwith died in jail in 2001. I was pleased when they put away Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton (both sentenced to life) for being part of the conspiracy to bomb the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, resulting in the deaths of four little girls (if you haven't already, see Sp...

So I was tooling around looking for images to illustrate an article about Harlem, when I came upon a cache of stunning color photos, a few of which are shown here. These were all shot in New York City in 1940 and 1941: A socialite poses in an oversized hat. Youths hang out at a municipal pool in Harlem. As for the little boy, whose name is Julius Perkins, Jr., and about whom I can't find one bit of information (except that there is also a photo of him with, of all people, Tallulah Bankhead), he wears that scarf with such twenty-first century attitude that it's almost scary. Maybe Tallulah taught him how. You may recognize the photographer's style, but if you don't, the lensman was Carl Van Vechten , a white man whose portfolio of black people—particularly celebrities, literati, entertainers, famous folks and the like—is huge, and about whom I will be writing again. There is much to say about the strange man, not the least of which is that he wrote a book called Nigger ...

From time to time I'll be writing about people and events from New York City's black history. Sometimes they will be linked to places you can visit; other times those places will be long-gone, but the story will remain. Mostly I'll just try to bring you something fresh. Next time you find yourself on Mercer Street, particularly between Bleecker and Prince, imagine yourself in early nineteenth-century New York. It was during that time, somewhere along that stretch that a black-owned theater called the African Grove opened in 1821, six years before the last slave was emancipated by the state of New York. Founded by a West Indian ex-ship’s steward named William Brown, the theater was built at great expense; this was no existing building, but brand new. Brown mounted Shakespeare—notably Hamlet , Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III , as well as contemporary plays such as Shotaway , about a slave revolt in Saint Domingue . The last was written by a black man and was no less tha...

On this day in 1689 the then-governor of New York, Jacob Leisler, wrote a letter to King William and Queen Mary of England about Fort Amsterdam situated right along State Street (at that time the water line was at State Street) informing them that the city was nearly destroyed. “I have immediately proceeded to the proclaiming [of a day for prayer and thanksgiving] which was solemnly effected the 22nd day of June when we had miraculous deliverance of a fyre which had been kendled in three severall places upon the Terret of the Church in the fort six thousand pounds of powder being next under the same roof and suspected to be done by one Papist who had been there before and was discovered by one Neger, and fort, city and the people were trew God’s mercy, saved of that hellish design." A few days after Jacob Leisler wrote the king and queen he mounted a rebellion of his own, seizing the very fort the Papist had allegedly tried to destroy. Leisler claimed that he was holding the fort...

So the other day I was reading an article in the July Esquire about something called Radical Honesty . In essence, to practice radical honesty you must tell all truth all of the time. He says, according to the article's author A.J. Jacobs, that "we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing ? No such thing." 'You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole f--- ing life. It's a better life,' explained the 66-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist Brad Blanton , creator of the RH movement. The only good times to lie, says Blanton , is if you're hiding Anne Frank in the attic and the Nazis are pounding on your door, or to the government; his e...

Last Saturday I got to catch my friend Jon E. Edwards perform at Joe's Pub. It was pretty sublime. He is a consummate entertainer, his baritone voice in great form, not a move out of place or unnecessary, his energy that of a man who has lived in this world for a while and picked up all of its hidden rhythms. He's been performing since the early Eighties, first with the Uptown Atomics, then with his own bicoastal band, the Internationals—and knows how to dole out in just the right dose his particular brand of music—music created in the fulcrum of punk rock and soul There's a documentary about him called "Jon E. Edwards Is In Love." And he truly must be in love, with making music, and in many ways, life in general, even as challenging and unyielding as life can be. I don't think I'd ever be able to create anything while taking care of an ailing mother, while at the same time working my tail off to pay the bills. Yet he does create. More importantly he belie...

Slowly, surely, larger and larger areas of Manhattan are becoming places I don’t like much any more. Neighborhoods have turned into bedroom communities for boring, self-involved, often very stupid people with lots of money. I’m sorry, but I just don’t know how to phrase it any other way. Our neighborhoods in the East Village and Lower East Side are far from exempt: The archdiocese of New York saw fit to shut down my church Mary Help of Christians on 12 th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A because there isn ’t a big enough congregation. Along with it went the Salesian Order that has been in the neighborhood since 1898, the parish officially incorporated in 1908. It celebrated its last mass on May 20. (I was too heartbroken and too much of a coward to attend). Call it shifting demographics, which truth be told is a legitimate claim, but let's be real about this. The funeral home on the corner closed, as well as the exterminator on the opposite corner, and the printing shop...

This is Mario. He lives on my block. On certain days he sits on my stoop and repairs and restores guitars. Often he has an old, tinny boom box on which he plays sentimental songs in Spanish. Sometimes he sings along lustily and out-of-tune. He is one of the long-time residents who makes my neighborhood the great place it is, and makes me happy to be living there. He is Gotham city soul.