ChickenBones: A Journal
for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes
www.nathanielturner.com 
My grandmother, who was very religious, and to whom I was much
attached – my master, who belonged to the church, and other religious persons
who visited the house, and whom I often saw at prayers, noticing the singularity
of my manners, . . . and my uncommon intelligence for a child, remarked I had
too much sense to be raised – and if I was, I would never be of any service to any one – as a slave . . .
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Christian Martyrdom in Southampton
A Theology of Black Liberation
By Rudolph Lewis
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Killing Fiends & Monsters
for Will Francis, died in battle, August 22, 1831
By Rudolph Lewis
INVOCATION
O Southampton Forest Man
of the Broad Ax!
Lover of freedom! Nerves
wrought with iron!
Speak to us how
you cleared the way to Jerusalem
From house to house
Hail! Maker of the Way!
A mountain taller
than Nats Trusted Four
You, Will Francis,
were a stone wall, an orgy
of brandy, gunpowder, & blood.
Tell us of cutting
down trees of illusions.
Speak! How came you
to the Sunday feast
at Cabin Pond,
Reese plantation, 21st August
1831? Hark brought
a pig, and Henry, brandy.
Yet you hungered
for a more delicious delight.
WILL SPEAKS
My life is worth no more than others;
My liberty dear to me as my life.
Dont you worry prophet, preacher
man. I want stutter, nor stumble.
You, preacher man,
will call me Executioner.
But Ill don no mask,
other than Gods creation.
I am Gods soldier,
ready for Judgment Day,
I am your black
hand, chopping them down!
I wont give
a hatchets glancing blow
Ill lay Joe Travis
out; his wife in bedone
blow of my ax!
Ill bash an infants brains
against bloody bricks
of a fireplace.
Call Richard “The Rev”
Whitehead from his cotton field,
Astride a horse,
Ill send him to his grave.
Whack up! Whack up!
Just a flip of the wrist
Catherine Whitehead,
her severed head
falls into the gray
nothing from her shoulders
like broken door hinges.
One stroke of my ax
heads roll like marbles
Elizabeth Turner too,
one blow of my ax,
Sarah Newsome,
Ill send her packing!
Whack up! Whack up!
I will cut my way
Through white bullets
of fiendish fear.
Monster-filled woods
bottoms of betrayal
Then die gloriously on Harris Field.
My life is worth no more than others;
My liberty dear to me as my life.
Dont you worry prophet, preacher
man. I want stutter, nor stumble.
Therell be no court for Will Francis
Theyll never take me and my ax
to trial, wild spirits fly in freedom
swamps, illusions, falling like trees.
* * * * *
Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety-Ay: How Satisfactch’ll Is Education Today? Toward a New Song of the South
Dr. Joyce E. King on Black Education and New Paradigms
* * * * *
The State of African Education (April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A teacher, psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7 / Part 3 of 7 / Part 4 of 7 / Part 5 of 7 / Part 6 of 7 / Part 7 of 7
* * * * *
Basil Davidson’s “Africa Series”
Different But Equal / Mastering A Continent / Caravans of Gold / The King and the City / The Bible and The Gun
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850
By Basil Davidson
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History, 1450-1850
By Basil Davidson
John Henrik ClarkeA Great and Mighty Walk
* * * * *
AALBC.com’s 25 Best Selling Books
Fiction
#1 – Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark #2 – Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree #3 – Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane #4 – Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper #5 – Stackin’ Paper 2 Genesis’ Payback by Joy King #6 – Thug Lovin’ (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark #7 – When I Get Where I’m Going by Cheryl Robinson #8 – Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby #9 – The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane
#10 – Covenant: A Thriller by Brandon Massey
#11 – Diary Of A Street Diva by Ashley and JaQuavis
#12 – Don’t Ever Tell by Brandon Massey
#13 – For colored girls who have considered suicide by Ntozake Shange
#14 – For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree
#15 – Homemade Loves by J. California Cooper
#16 – The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper
#17 – Player Haters by Carl Weber
#18 – Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare
#19 – Stackin’ Paper by Joy King
#20 – Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey
#21 – The Upper Room by Mary Monroe
#22 Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark
#23 – Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark
#24 – Married Men by Carl Weber
#25 – I Dreamt I Was in Heaven – The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter
Non-fiction
#1 – Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable #2 – Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans #3 – Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane #4 – Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper #5 – Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant #6 – Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey #7 – The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight #8 – The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing #9 – The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson
#10 – John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History by Ahati N. N. Toure
#11 – Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley
#12 –The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
#13 – The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell
#14 – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
#15 – Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can’t Commit by RM Johnson
#16 – Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins
#17 – Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
#18 – A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
#19 – John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
#20 – Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris
#21 – Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice
#22 – 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino #23 – Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul by Tom Lagana #24 – 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields
#25 – Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class by Lisa B. Thompson
* * * * *
By Manning Marable
Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins’ bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable’s new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties.
Reaching into Malcolm’s troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents’ activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
* * * * *
The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian of the early republic, Maier devoted a decade to studying the immense documentation of the ratification of the Constitution. Scholars might approach her books footnotes first, but history fans who delve into her narrative will meet delegates to the state conventions whom most history books, absorbed with the Founders, have relegated to obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local counties and towns, they influenced a conventions decision to accept or reject the Constitution. Their biographies and democratic credentials emerge in Maiers accounts of their elections to a convention, the political attitudes they carried to the conclave, and their declamations from the floor. The latter expressed opponents objections to provisions of the Constitution, some of which seem anachronistic (election regulation raised hackles) and some of which are thoroughly contemporary (the power to tax individuals directly). Ripostes from proponents, the Federalists, animate the great detail Maier provides, as does her recounting how one state conventions verdict affected anothers. Displaying the grudging grassroots blessing the Constitution originally received, Maier eruditely yet accessibly revives a neglected but critical passage in American history.Booklist
* * * * *
The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
* * * * *
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 — The Founding of Haiti
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update 30 April 2012
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