Journals

“ You fucking stupid bitch,” a man screamed followed by the slam of a car door. Feet thumped and the passenger door swung open. The incoherent pleas of a woman could be heard. Then the loud sound of skin making contact with skin reverberated through [...]

The fourth time a Poughkeepsie police officer told me that my Vassar College Faculty ID could make everything OK was three years ago. I was driving down Wilbur Avenue. When the white police officer, whose head was way too small for his neck, asked if [...]

As a child in South Carolina, I spent summers like so many children — sitting on my grandparents’ back porch with my siblings, spitting watermelon seeds into the garden or, even worse, swallowing them and trembling as my older brother and sister spoke of the [...]

WE MUST BE THE NEW GUARDS: OPEN LETTER TO WHITE POETS "But when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw [...]

By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. November 13, 2014 | Photograph; Old Store Building Near Enoree, South-Carolina, by Author copyright bearden82 If you’re afraid they might discover your redneck past There are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past [...]

Do you hear that? Come closer. That’s the sound of my heart breaking. My son has always loved the ocean. His eyes are the color of the sea, changing from blue to green with the swell of the tide. And my love for him is [...]

In December, while being drinky poolside with two friends under the blanket of a sticky Panama City night, I watched Twitter collectively orgasm after Beyoncé dropped. The next morning, I steered a young lady named Kitty Pryde back onto the right path, into the light. [...]

(For Mike Brown, Lennon Lacy, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and so on, and so on ...) they kilt that boy lynched him just as sho' as my name is what it is they did it cause that's what they do in kokomo Mississippi [...]

I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the [...]