soulbrotherv2:

Zora Neale Hurston is one of the greatest American writers (not just on of the greatest African American writers), period, but so many of my students say that they have never encountered Zora Neale Hurston until they came to college.  

Nevertheless, if you haven’t read her yet, or it’s been a while, time to get your weight up.

Zora Neale Hurston Reading List

1.  Their Eyes Were Watching God

2.  Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (P.S.)

3.  Mules and Men (P.S.)

4.  Jonah’s Gourd Vine: A Novel (P.S.)

5.  Seraph on the Suwanee: A Novel (P.S.)

6.  Moses, Man of the Mountain (P.S.)

7.  The Complete Stories (P.S.)

8.  Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (P.S.) w/ Langston Hughes

9.  Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (P.S.)

10.  Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States
Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings From the Federal Writers’ Project edited by Pamela Bordelon

11.  I Love Myself When I Am Laughing… And Then Again: A Zora Neale  Hurston Reader w/ Alice Walker and Mary Helen Washington

12.  Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters by Carla Kaplan, Ph.D.

Pick one, any one, and you’ll be glad you did!

(via soulbrotherv2)

justbecooljc:

“the best I can do” #HumbleBrag

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(Source: astral-dementia, via blounderwous)

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ferrarisheppard:

King Bansah of Ghana. 

(via shabazzpizazz)

theblackamericanprincess:

Black icons hanging out

I’m pretty obsessed with this upon first sight.

(Source: negressive, via shabazzpizazz)

(Source: thegreats247, via shabazzpizazz)

zamaaanawal:

Aswan, Egypt, 1910.

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foxvenom:

a clockwork orange

(via t-o-d-i-e-f-o-r)

taylorlaney:

shialablunt:

fckthtsht:

Marilyn Monroe and Bert Stern during a photo shoot, 1962.

I think this might be my favorite picture of all time

Wow, my lady

(Source: missingmarilyn, via hard-kn0cks)

soulbrotherv2:

Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern

Babylon Girls is a groundbreaking cultural history of the African American women who performed in variety shows—chorus lines, burlesque revues, cabaret acts, and the like—between 1890 and 1945. Through a consideration of the gestures, costuming, vocal techniques, and stagecraft developed by African American singers and dancers, Jayna Brown explains how these women shaped the movement and style of an emerging urban popular culture. In an era of U.S. and British imperialism, these women challenged and played with constructions of race, gender, and the body as they moved across stages and geographic space. They pioneered dance movements including the cakewalk, the shimmy, and the Charleston—black dances by which the “New Woman” defined herself. These early-twentieth-century performers brought these dances with them as they toured across the United States and around the world, becoming cosmopolitan subjects more widely traveled than many of their audiences.

Investigating both well-known performers such as Ada Overton Walker and Josephine Baker and lesser-known artists such as Belle Davis and Valaida Snow, Brown weaves the histories of specific singers and dancers together with incisive theoretical insights. She describes the strange phenomenon of blackface performances by women, both black and white, and she considers how black expressive artists navigated racial segregation. Fronting the “picaninny choruses” of African American child performers who toured Britain and the Continent in the early 1900s, and singing and dancing in The Creole Show (1890), Darktown Follies (1913), and Shuffle Along (1921), black women variety-show performers of the early twentieth century paved the way for later generations of African American performers. Brown shows not only how these artists influenced transnational ideas of the modern woman but also how their artistry was an essential element in the development of jazz.

(via black-culture)

(Source: fuckyeahlotuspose, via raysymone)

superseventies:

Roberta Flack, ‘Killing Me Softly’ 1973 promo advertisement.

(Source: pinterest.com)