(ThyBlackMan.com) My grandmother kept receipts. Not only the paper kind, though a shoebox of those sat beneath her bed. The ones that counted she kept in memory, in the long private ledger a person compiles after a lifetime of learning whether the world means to deal fairly. The grocer who ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Plenty of presidents have come and gone in my lifetime. A few earned my vote with pride. A couple I would have crossed the street to avoid. Across all those years one lesson stuck, and I wish more of our young people held it close before they get swept ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) I have been watching this country choose its leaders for longer than I care to put in print, and if you do that long enough you start to notice the things that nobody says out loud. There is a quiet in American politics, a thing that lives underneath the ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) I have been writing about politics long enough to remember when the idea of a Black family living in the White House was something folks only said in low voices, half dream and half dare. So when Michelle Obama walked through that door back in 2009, I watched the ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) I have buried friends. Sat across thick glass from men I love too, watched them grow gray under hard fluorescent light while the world kept on turning without them in it. So when I speak to you now, understand the words are coming from a heart that has already ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Walk into almost any bar in Boston right now and you will hear bagpipes. Not on the speakers, actual bagpipes, carried by actual Scottish fans in kilts who have taken over the city like they were always supposed to be there. Locals have not minded one bit. They have ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) On June 18, Barack Obama stood in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side and tried, not very successfully, to hold back tears. Not performed emotion. Not the composed, camera-ready version of feeling that politicians learn somewhere along the way. Michelle was up at the podium talking about him, about ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were never carried through the White House years on pillows. Folks who remember that season without dressing it up know better. Those years had heat on them. Health care had people hollering at town halls. Race stayed near the front door whether some wanted ...