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Race – Ennis Smith

Race

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Featured

Current Affairs, Essays, Gay, My back pages, Race, Writing

tiny love story/New York Times Sunday Oct 22, 2023

October 24, 2023

Featured

Books, Essays, Music, My back pages, Race

Urban Savant

January 25, 2022

Greg Tate, the prolific critic and culture chronicler, died Tuesday December 7. He happened to be a neighbor of mine. For close to 30 years we lived next door to each other in the Sugar Hill section of New York’s Washington Heights. We shared what neighbors share: a street/mecca where greats like Ellington and Strayhorn,…

Current Affairs, Film, History, Music, New York, Race, Theater

Vampire Elegies, 50s Negroes and White Folks With Guitars

April 15, 2014

On screen, onstage, in concert: here’s some stuff I got to see last week. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, director). What could be more modern? Two lovers live on opposite sides of the continent; when Adam (Tom Hiddleston), a legendary rock star recluse holed up in Detroit, becomes suicidal, his lady, Eve (the tres elegant…

Current Affairs, History, Literature, Politics, Race

Richard’s Blanco’s One Day

January 21, 2013

Nothing like an inauguration and a pop of poetry to inspire one’s day. Happy MLK Day to all. “One Today” One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One…

Current Affairs, Dance, Gay, Music, Race, Vespers

Last Dance: Donna Summer, Pop Vocalist, 1948-2012

May 18, 2012

Ah…love to love ya, baby… RIP, and thanks.

Current Affairs, Gay, History, Politics, Race, Religion

But how will it play in the South?

May 9, 2012

Finally he’s off the fence. Obama endorses same-sex marriage–thousands cheer…history is made…and the hand-wringing (over his re-election prospects, and whether this constitutes a genuine sea change for gay rights in America) begins…

Current Affairs, Dance, Film, Race, Television, Theater, Vespers

Firsts: Don Cornelius 1936-2012, Camilla Williams 1919-2012, Ben Gazzara 1930-2012

February 6, 2012

You turned on the TV on Saturday afternoon and there he was, the envy of every black boy on the block. It was his high style and aspirational exhortations that drew us each week, mirrored more youthfully by the Soul Train dancers, whose moves we copied for use on our own dance floors: street corners,…

Art, Gay, New York, Race, Short Cuts

At the Whitney and Artists Space, Art by Boys Who Like Boys

April 28, 2011

Glenn Ligon, Malcolm X Like Stonewall, the art revolution of the 1980s was a coming out as explosive as the times required. Many of the artists who broke out were gay: Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujur, Catherine Opie and Keith Haring marched into our consciousness with forceful works that expressed an era’s glittery…

Current Affairs, Gay, Politics, Race

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell 1993-2010

December 27, 2010

Gone the way of Jim Crow, and every other heinous bit of marginalizing legislation. RIP, you bastard.

Film, Music, Politics, Race, Television, Theater

Lena Horne 1917-2010

May 11, 2010

Over the past few months we’ve suffered the loss of pioneers the likes of who we’ll never see again: Benjamin Hooks, Dorothy Height, and now Lena Horne: she certainly deserves a place alongside those lauded blacks activists if onlyl because one could chart the progress of black civil rights in this country through the trajectory…