theblackbottom

We at theblackbottom.com want you to take some time out to remember Chicago Black Power Movement Activist Fred Hampton!
Fred Hampton: (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He was killed as he lay in bed in his [...]

Tamika Mallory is the recently appointed executive director of Reverend Al Sharpton’s civil rights organization the “National Action Network”. Having already made a name for herself in New York City, she is definitely one of those emerging African American leaders that will soon be a household name continuing in the 21st century struggle for [...]

Colbert King spells out the perils of Bourgeois Politics plainly. There is an old saying, “Dance with the one that brought you.” I am curious as to Mr. Fenty’s understanding of the history of Black people in D.C. and why they might feel resentful to the emerging politics of race and economic privilege in the [...]

Austin Black’s love of Detroit goes deep.
“Detroit created my love affair with cities and urban planning,” says Black, a Cornell grad who grew up in and around the city. “I see what as I do now as giving back to a place that really influenced who I am today. Detroit is not dead. There are [...]

This is certainly an interesting political campaign for Mayor in the nation’s capital. In January I wrote a Friday Comment titled The Perils of Bourgeois Politics and this campaign certainly looks like I was dead on in my commentary according to this Washington Post article. Lets keep our eyes on this campaign because it will [...]

Once You Learn How to Read, You Will Be Forever Free!~Frederick Douglass
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Alex Heard is an editor at Wired magazine. He has also edited and written for The New York Times Magazine, Outside, The New Republic, Slate, and many other publications.
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargesia, Somalia in 1981 and was educated in the [...]

Five myths about mosques in America
By Edward E. Curtis IV
Curtis is millennium chair of liberal arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is the author of “Muslims in America: A Short History” and the editor of the “Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History.”
Source: Washington Post
Sunday, August 29, 2010; B03
In addition to spawning passionate debates in the [...]

Daughter of a aristocratic WASP and Haitian Songbird, Susan Fales-Hill presents a rewarding novel of her adventures.

The memoirist-philanthropist-TV producer talks about her debut novel, Bill Cosby, Lena Horne and the philanthropic life.
By: The Root.com
The intrigue in One Flight Up, the first novel by Susan Fales-Hill, begins before the story does. Just after the title page, [...]

Two weeks ago while in the hood shooting his latest street anthem Jizzle. Young Jeezy over heard some of the parents in the community talking about how the kids were getting ready to go back to school yet still lacked supplies. Atl’s kids going without weighed heavy on Jeezy’s mind over the weeks while on [...]

I do not remember much about August 28, 1963 because I was just shy of my seventh birthday. In my young forming mind I was not thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. or the protest that had been waged in Birmingham, Alabama that spring. The thing that most concerned me that August was my baseball [...]