Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books. She was a 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts.

Early life

Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham, Alabama on September 9, 1934. When Sanchez was only a year old, her mother died and Sanchez was sent to live with her paternal grandmother. She then lived with family and friends until 1941, when she moved to Harlem to live with her father, her sister, and her stepmother who was her father's third wife. In 1955, she received a B.A. in Political Science from Hunter College, where she had also taken several creative writing courses. Later, Sanchez completed postgraduate work at New York University where she studied poetry with Louise Bogan. Although her first marriage to Albert Sanchez did not last, Sonia Sanchez would retain her professional name. Sanchez then married poet Etheridge Knight. They later divorced. In 1972, she joined the Nation of Islam, but left the organization after three years in 1975 because her views on women's rights conflicted with theirs. She has three children and 3 grandchildren.

Career

Sanchez has taught as a professor at eight universities and has lectured at over 500 college campuses across the US, including Howard University. She advocated the introduction of Black Studies courses in California. Sanchez was the first to create and teach a course based on Black Women and literature in the United States. Sanchez was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she began working in 1977, where she held the Laura Carnell chair until her retirement in 1999. She is currently a poet-in-residence at Temple University. She has read her poetry in Africa, the Caribbean, China, Australia, Europe, Nicaragua, Canada, and Cuba. Sanchez has also appeared on Bill Cosby's CBS show in the 1990s.

Sanchez is a member of the Plowshares, the Brandywine Peace Community and MADRE. She also supports MOMS AND in Alabama and the National Black United Front. Sanchez was a very influential part of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez was an advocate for the people. She was a member of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality), where she met Malcolm X. She wrote many plays and books that had to do with the struggles and lives of Black America. Sanchez has edited two anthologies on Black literature, ''We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans'' and ''360° of Blackness Coming at You''.

Sanchez is also known for her innovative melding of musical formats - like the blues - and traditional poetic formats like haiku and tanka. She also tends to use incorrect spelling to get her point across.

In 1969, Sanchez was awarded the P.E.N. Writing Award. She was awarded the National Education Association Award 1977-1988. She also won the National Academy and Arts Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in 1978-1979. In 1985, she was awarded the American Book Award for ''Homegirls and Handgrenades''. She has also been awarded the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Bibliography

Poetry

''Homecoming'', Broadside Press, 1969

''We a Baddddd People'' (1970), Broadside Press, 1973

''Love Poems'', Third Press, 1973

''A Blues Book for a Blue Black Magic Woman'', Broadside Press, 1974

''Autumn Blues''

''Continuous Fire: A Collection of Poetry''

''Shake Down Memory: A Collection of Political Essays and Speeches''

''It's a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs'' (1971)

''Homegirls and Handgrenades''(1985) (reprint White Pine Press, 2007, ISBN 9781893996809)

''Under a Soprano Sky'', Africa World Press, 1987, ISBN 9780865430525

''I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems'', Third World Press, 1985, ISBN 9780883781128

''Wounded in the House of a Friend'', Beacon Press, 1995, ISBN 9780807068267

''Does Your House have Lions'', Beacon Press, 1997, ISBN 9780807068304

''Like the Singing Coming Off of Drums'', Beacon Press, 1998

''Ash''(2001)

''Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam'' (2001)

Plays

''Black Cats and Uneasy Landings''

''I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't'' (1982)

''The Bronx is Next'' (1970)

''Sista Son/Ji'' (1972)

''Uh Huh, But How Do It Free Us?'' (1975)

''Malcolm Man/Don't Live Here No More'' (1979)

''I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and Other Plays'' (Duke University Press, 2010)

Children's Books

''It's a New Day''

''A Sound Investment''

''The Adventures of Fat Head, Small Head, and Square Head'', The Third Press, 1973, ISBN 9780893880941

Anthologies

''We Be Word Sorcerers''

''360 Degrees of Blackness Coming at Ya!''

Interviews

Discography

''A Sun Lady for All Seasons Reads Her Poetry'' (Folkways Records, 1971)

''Every Tone a Testimony'' (Smithsonian Folkways, 2001)

See also

Mumia Abu-Jamal

References

External links

Official Website

Academy of American Poets

Sonia Sanchez Biography at Voices from the Gap

Approaches to Teaching Sonia Sanchez's Poetry

An Evening with Sonia Sanchez

Painted Voices: Sonia Sanchez Biography

Women of Color Women of Word

Sonia Sanchez Biography at Speak Out

Beacon Press web site for Sonia Sanchez.

Sonia Sanchez Article at the Heath Anthology of American Literature

Sanchez Discography at Smithsonian Folkways

Sonia Sanchez's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project

Category:African American poets Category:English-language haiku poets Category:African American dramatists and playwrights Category:African Americans' rights activists Category:American anti-war activists Category:Pennsylvania political activists Category:Hunter College alumni Category:Howard University alumni Category:Temple University faculty Category:People from Birmingham, Alabama Category:1934 births Category:Living people Category:Pew Fellows in the Arts Category:African American female poets Category:African American female activists

it:Sonia Sanchez simple:Sonia Sanchez

:''For the substance used for medieval medicine or preserving corpses, see Mummia''

name	Mumia Abu-Jamal
image name	Mumia03.jpg
birth name	Wesley Cook
birth date	April 24, 1954
birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
conviction	First degree murder
conviction penalty	Life imprisonment without parole
conviction status	Incarcerated
children	}}

Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954) is an American convict, serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He was sentenced to death at his first trial in July 1982, and his case became an international cause célèbre. Before his arrest, he was an activist and radio journalist who became President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He was a member of the Black Panther Party until October 1970.

Supporters and opponents disagreed on the appropriateness of the death penalty, his guilt, and whether he received a fair trial. He was described as "perhaps the world's best known death-row inmate". During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, notably ''Live from Death Row'' (1995).

In 2008, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction, but ordered a new capital sentencing hearing over concerns that the jury was improperly instructed. Subsequently, the United States Supreme Court allowed his conviction to stand, and ordered the appeals court to reconsider its decision to rescind the death sentence. In 2011, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction as well as its decision to vacate the death sentence, and the District Attorney of Philadelphia announced that prosecutors would no longer seek the death penalty. He was removed from death row in January 2012.

Early life and activism

Abu-Jamal was given the name Mumia in 1968 by his high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures in which students took African classroom names. According to Abu-Jamal, 'Mumia' means "Prince" and was the name of anti-colonial African nationalists conducting warfare against the British in Kenya at the time of its independence movement. He adopted the surname Abu-Jamal ("father of Jamal" in Arabic) after the birth of his son Jamal on July 18, 1971. His first marriage at age 19, to Jamal's mother, Biba, was short-lived. Their daughter, Lateefa, was born shortly after the wedding. Abu-Jamal married his second wife, Marilyn (known as "Peachie"), in 1977. Their son, Mazi, was born in early 1978. By 1981, Abu-Jamal was living with his third and current wife, Wadiya.

Involvement with the Black Panthers

In his own writings, Abu-Jamal describes his adolescent experience of being "kicked ... into the Black Panther Party" after suffering a beating from "white racists" and a policeman for his efforts to disrupt a George Wallace for President rally in 1968. The following year, at the age of 15, he helped form the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, taking appointment, in his own words, as the chapter's "Lieutenant of Information", exercising a responsibility for writing information and news communications. In one of the interviews he gave at the time he quoted Mao Zedong, saying that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". That same year, he dropped out of Benjamin Franklin High School and took up residence in the branch's headquarters. He spent late 1969 in New York City and early 1970 in Oakland, living and working with BPP colleagues in those cities. He was a party member from May 1969 until October 1970 and was subject to Federal Bureau of Investigation COINTELPRO surveillance from then until about 1974.

Education and journalism career

After leaving the Panthers he returned to his old high school, but was suspended for distributing literature calling for "black revolutionary student power". He also led unsuccessful protests to change the school name to Malcolm X High. After attaining his GED, he studied briefly at Goddard College in rural Vermont.

By 1975 he was pursuing a vocation in radio newscasting, first at Temple University's WRTI and then at commercial enterprises. In 1975, he was employed at radio station WHAT and he became host of a weekly feature program of WCAU-FM in 1978. He was also employed for brief periods at radio station WPEN, and became active in the local chapter of the Marijuana Users Association of America. From 1979 he worked at National Public Radio-affiliate WUHY until 1981 when he was asked to submit his resignation after a dispute about the requirements of objective focus in his presentation of news. As a radio journalist he earned the moniker "the voice of the voiceless" and was renowned for identifying with and giving exposure to the MOVE anarcho-primitivist commune in Philadelphia's Powelton Village neighborhood, including reportage of the 1979–80 trial of certain of its members (the "MOVE Nine") charged with the murder of police officer James Ramp. During his broadcasting career, his high-profile interviews included Julius Erving, Bob Marley, and Alex Haley, and he was elected president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

At the time of Daniel Faulkner's murder, Abu-Jamal was working as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia two nights a week to supplement his income. He had been working part-time as a reporter for WDAS, then an African-American-oriented and minority-owned radio station.

Arrest for murder and trial

On December 9, 1981, in Philadelphia, close to the intersection at 13th and Locust Streets, Philadelphia Police Department officer Daniel Faulkner conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle belonging to William Cook, Abu-Jamal's younger brother. During the traffic stop, Abu-Jamal's taxi was parked across the street, and Abu-Jamal ran across the street towards the traffic stop. At the traffic stop, there was an exchange of fire. Both Officer Faulkner and Abu-Jamal were wounded, and Faulkner died. Police arrived on the scene and arrested Abu-Jamal, who was found wearing a shoulder holster. A revolver, which had five spent cartridges, was beside him. He was taken directly from the scene of the shooting to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital where he received treatment for his wound, the result of a shot from Faulkner.

Abu-Jamal was charged with the first-degree murder of Daniel Faulkner. The case went to trial in June 1982 in Philadelphia. Judge Albert F. Sabo initially agreed to Abu-Jamal's request to represent himself, with criminal defense attorney Anthony Jackson acting as his legal advisor. During the first day of the trial, Judge Sabo warned Abu-Jamal that he would forfeit his legal right to self-representation if he kept being intentionally disruptive in a fashion that was unbecoming under the law. Due to Abu-Jamal's continued disruptive behavior, Judge Sabo ruled that Abu-Jamal forfeited his right to self-representation.

Prosecution case at trial

The prosecution presented four witnesses to the court. Robert Chobert, a cab driver who testified he was parked behind Faulkner, identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter. Cynthia White, a prostitute, testified that Abu-Jamal emerged from a nearby parking lot and shot Faulkner. Michael Scanlan, a motorist, testified that from two car lengths away, he saw a man, matching Abu-Jamal's description, run across the street from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner. Albert Magilton, a pedestrian who did not see the actual murder, testified to witnessing Faulkner pull over Cook's car. At the point of seeing Abu-Jamal start to cross the street toward them from the parking lot, Magilton turned away and lost sight of what happened next.

The prosecution also presented two witnesses who were at the hospital after the altercation. Hospital security guard Priscilla Durham and Police Officer Garry Bell testified that Abu-Jamal confessed in the hospital by saying, "I shot the motherfucker, and I hope the motherfucker dies."

A .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver, belonging to Abu-Jamal, with five spent cartridges was retrieved beside him at the scene. He was wearing a shoulder holster, and Anthony Paul, the Supervisor of the Philadelphia Police Department's firearms identification unit, testified at trial that the shell casings and rifling characteristics of the weapon were consistent with bullet fragments taken from Faulkner's body. Tests to confirm that Abu-Jamal had handled and fired the weapon were not performed, as contact with arresting police and other surfaces at the scene could have compromised the forensic value of such tests.

Defense case at trial

The defense maintained that Abu-Jamal was innocent of the charges and that the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses was unreliable. The defense presented nine character witnesses, including poet Sonia Sanchez, who testified that Abu-Jamal was "viewed by the black community as a creative, articulate, peaceful, genial man". Another defense witness, Dessie Hightower, testified that he saw a man running along the street shortly after the shooting although he did not see the actual shooting itself. His testimony contributed to the development of a "running man theory", based on the possibility that a "running man" may have been the actual shooter. Veronica Jones also testified for the defense, but she did not see anyone running. Other potential defense witnesses refused to appear in court. Abu-Jamal did not testify in his own defense. Nor did his brother, who said at the crime scene, "I ain't got nothing to do with this."

Verdict and sentence

The jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict after three hours of deliberations.

In the sentencing phase of the trial, Abu-Jamal read to the jury from a prepared statement. He was then cross-examined about issues relevant to the assessment of his character by Joseph McGill, the prosecuting attorney.

In his statement Abu-Jamal criticized his attorney as a "legal trained lawyer" who was imposed on him against his will and who "knew he was inadequate to the task and chose to follow the directions of this black-robed conspirator, [Judge] Albert Sabo, even if it meant ignoring my directions". He claimed that his rights had been "deceitfully stolen" from him by Sabo, particularly focusing on the denial of his request to receive defense assistance from non-attorney John Africa and being prevented from proceeding ''pro se''. He quoted remarks of John Africa, and said: :"Does it matter whether a white man is charged with killing a black man or a black man is charged with killing a white man? As for justice when the prosecutor represents the Commonwealth the Judge represents the Commonwealth and the court-appointed lawyer is paid and supported by the Commonwealth, who follows the wishes of the defendant, the man charged with the crime? If the court-appointed lawyer ignores, or goes against the wishes of the man he is charged with representing, whose wishes does he follow? Who does he truly represent or work for? ... I am innocent of these charges that I have been charged of and convicted of and despite the connivance of Sabo, McGill and Jackson to deny me my so-called rights to represent myself, to assistance of my choice, to personally select a jury who is totally of my peers, to cross-examine witnesses, and to make both opening and closing arguments, I am still innocent of these charges."

Abu-Jamal was subsequently sentenced to death by the unanimous decision of the jury.

Appeals and review

State appeals

Direct appeal of his conviction was considered and denied by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on March 6, 1989, subsequently denying rehearing. The Supreme Court of the United States denied his petition for writ of ''certiorari'' on October 1, 1990, and denied his petition for rehearing twice up to June 10, 1991.

On June 1, 1995 his death warrant was signed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. Its execution was suspended while Abu-Jamal pursued state post-conviction review. At the post-conviction review hearings, new witnesses were called. William "Dales" Singletary testified that he saw the shooting and that the gunman was the passenger in Cook's car. Singletary's account contained discrepancies which rendered it "not credible" in the opinion of the court. William Harmon, a convicted fraudster, testified that Faulkner's murderer fled in a car which pulled up at the crime scene, and could not have been Abu-Jamal. However, Robert Harkins testified that he had witnessed a man stand over Faulkner as the latter lay wounded on the ground, who shot him point-blank in the face and then "walked and sat down on the curb".

The six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled unanimously that all issues raised by Abu-Jamal, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit. The Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for certiorari against that decision on October 4, 1999, enabling Ridge to sign a second death warrant on October 13, 1999. Its execution in turn was stayed as Abu-Jamal commenced his pursuit of federal habeas corpus review.

In 1999, Arnold Beverly claimed that he and an unnamed assailant, not Mumia Abu-Jamal, shot Daniel Faulkner as part of a contract killing because Faulkner was interfering with graft and payoff to corrupt police. The Beverly affidavit became an item of division for Mumia's defense team, as some thought it usable and others rejected Beverly's story as "not credible".

Private investigator George Newman claimed in 2001 that Chobert had recanted his testimony. Commentators also noted that police and news photographs of the crime scene did not show Chobert's taxi, and that Cynthia White, the only witness at the trial to testify to seeing the taxi, had previously provided crime scene descriptions that omitted it. Cynthia White was declared to be dead by the state of New Jersey in 1992 although Pamela Jenkins claimed that she saw White alive as late as 1997. Mumia supporters often claim that White was a police informant and that she falsified her testimony against Abu-Jamal. Priscilla Durham's step-brother, Kenneth Pate, who was imprisoned with Abu-Jamal on other charges, has since claimed that Durham admitted to not hearing the hospital confession. The hospital doctors have stated that Abu-Jamal was not capable of making such a dramatic bedside confession at that time. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania rejected a further request from Abu-Jamal for a hearing into claims that the trial witnesses perjured themselves on the grounds that he had waited too long before filing the appeal.

Federal ruling directing resentencing

Abu-Jamal did not make any public statements about Faulkner's murder until May 2001. In his version of events, he claimed that he was sitting in his cab across the street when he heard shouting, then saw a police vehicle, then heard the sound of gunshots. Upon seeing his brother appearing disoriented across the street, Abu-Jamal ran to him from the parking lot and was shot by a police officer. The driver originally stopped by police officer Faulkner, Abu-Jamal's brother William Cook, did not testify or make any statement until April 29, 2001, when he claimed that he had not seen who had shot Faulkner.

Judge William H. Yohn Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania upheld the conviction but vacated the sentence of death on December 18, 2001, citing irregularities in the original process of sentencing. Particularly, He ordered the State of Pennsylvania to commence new sentencing proceedings within 180 days and ruled that it was unconstitutional to require that a jury's finding of circumstances mitigating against determining a sentence of death be unanimous. Eliot Grossman and Marlene Kamish, attorneys for Abu-Jamal, criticized the ruling on the grounds that it denied the possibility of a ''trial de novo'' at which they could introduce evidence that their client had been framed. Prosecutors also criticized the ruling; Officer Faulkner's widow Maureen described Abu-Jamal as a "remorseless, hate-filled killer" who would "be permitted to enjoy the pleasures that come from simply being alive" on the basis of the judgment. Both parties appealed.

Federal appeal

On December 6, 2005, the Third Circuit Court admitted four issues for appeal of the ruling of the District Court: (1) in relation to sentencing, whether the jury verdict form had been flawed and the judge's instructions to the jury had been confusing; (2) in relation to conviction and sentencing, whether racial bias in jury selection existed to an extent tending to produce an inherently biased jury and therefore an unfair trial (the ''Batson'' claim); (3) in relation to conviction, whether the prosecutor improperly attempted to reduce jurors' sense of responsibility by telling them that a guilty verdict would be subsequently vetted and subject to appeal; (4) in relation to post-conviction review hearings in 1995–6, whether the presiding judge, who had also presided at the trial, demonstrated unacceptable bias in his conduct.

The Third Circuit Court heard oral arguments in the appeals on May 17, 2007, at the United States Courthouse in Philadelphia. The appeal panel consisted of Chief Judge Anthony Joseph Scirica, Judge Thomas Ambro, and Judge Robert Cowen. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sought to reinstate the sentence of death, on the basis that Yohn's ruling was flawed, as he should have deferred to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which had already ruled on the issue of sentencing, and the ''Batson'' claim was invalid because Abu-Jamal made no complaints during the original jury selection. Abu-Jamal's counsel told the Third Circuit Court that Abu-Jamal did not get a fair trial because the jury was both racially-biased and misinformed, and the judge was a racist. The last of those claims was made based on the statement by a Philadelphia court stenographer named Terri Maurer-Carter who, in a 2001 affidavit, stated that Judge Sabo had said "Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the nigger." in the course of a conversation regarding Abu-Jamal's case. Sabo denied having made any such comment.

On March 27, 2008, the three-judge panel issued a majority 2–1 opinion upholding Yohn's 2001 opinion but rejecting the bias and ''Batson'' claims, with Judge Ambro dissenting on the ''Batson'' issue. On July 22, 2008, Abu-Jamal's formal petition seeking reconsideration of the decision by the full Third Circuit panel of 12 judges was denied. On April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court also refused to hear Abu-Jamal's appeal. On January 19, 2010, the Supreme Court ordered the appeals court to reconsider its decision to rescind the death penalty, with the same three-judge panel convening in Philadelphia on November 9, 2010, to hear oral argument. On April 26, 2011, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed its prior decision to vacate the death sentence on the grounds that the jury instructions and verdict form were ambiguous and confusing.

Death penalty dropped

On December 7, 2011, Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams announced that prosecutors would no longer seek the death penalty for Abu-Jamal. Williams said that Abu-Jamal will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Life as a prisoner

In 1991 Abu-Jamal published an essay in the ''Yale Law Journal'', on the death penalty and his Death Row experience. In May 1994, Abu-Jamal was engaged by National Public Radio's ''All Things Considered'' program to deliver a series of monthly three-minute commentaries on crime and punishment. The broadcast plans and commercial arrangement were canceled following condemnations from, among others, the Fraternal Order of Police and US Senator Bob Dole (R-KS). Abu-Jamal sued NPR for not airing his work, but a federal judge dismissed the suit. The commentaries later appeared in print in May 1995 as part of ''Live from Death Row''.

In 1999, he was invited to record a keynote address for the graduating class at The Evergreen State College. The event was protested heavily. In 2000, he recorded a commencement address for Antioch College. The now defunct New College of California School of Law presented him with an honorary degree "for his struggle to resist the death penalty".

With occasional interruptions due to prison disciplinary actions, Abu-Jamal has for many years been a regular commentator on an online broadcast, sponsored by Prison Radio, as well as a regular columnist for ''Junge Welt'', a Marxist newspaper in Germany. In 1995, he was punished with solitary confinement for engaging in entrepreneurship contrary to prison regulations. Subsequent to the airing of the 1996 HBO documentary ''Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt?'', which included footage from visitation interviews conducted with him, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections acted to ban outsiders from using any recording equipment in state prisons. In litigation before the US Court of Appeals in 1998 he successfully established his right to write for financial gain in prison. The same litigation also established that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections had illegally opened his mail in an attempt to establish whether he was writing for financial gain. When, for a brief time in August 1999, he began delivering his radio commentaries live on the Pacifica Network's ''Democracy Now!'' weekday radio newsmagazine, prison staff severed the connecting wires of his telephone from their mounting in mid-performance.

His publications include ''Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience'', in which he explores religious themes, ''All Things Censored'', a political critique examining issues of crime and punishment, ''Live From Death Row'', a diary of life on Pennsylvania's death row, and ''We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party'', which is a history of the Black Panthers drawing on autobiographical material.

At the end of January 2012 he was released into general population at State Correctional Institution – Mahanoy.

Popular support and opposition

Abu-Jamal's supporters protest at perceived injustice or deplore the death penalty in his and other cases. Labor unions, US and foreign city governments, politicians, advocates, educators, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and human rights advocacy organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have expressed concern about his case. They are opposed by the family of Daniel Faulkner, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Fraternal Order of Police. In August 1999, the Fraternal Order of Police called for an economic boycott against all individuals and organizations that support Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal has been made an honorary citizen of about 25 cities around the world, including Paris, Montreal, Palermo and Copenhagen. In 2001, he received the sixth biennial Erich Mühsam Prize, which recognizes outstanding activism on behalf of a liberatory vision of human society in keeping with that of its anarchist namesake; in particular, most of its awardees have been activists in the cause of social justice for persecuted minorities. In October 2002, he was awarded honorary membership of the Berlin-based Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists and Antifascist Groups (VVN-BdA).

On April 29, 2006, a newly-paved road in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis was named ''Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal'' in his honor. In protest of the street-naming, US Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced resolutions in both Houses of Congress condemning the decision. The House of Representatives voted 368–31 in favor of the resolution. In December 2006, the 25th anniversary of the murder, the executive committee of the Republican Party for the 59th Ward of the City of Philadelphia—covering approximately Germantown, Philadelphia—filed two criminal complaints in the French legal system against the city of Paris and the city of Saint-Denis, accusing the municipalities of "glorifying" Abu-Jamal and alleging the offense "apology or denial of crime" in respect of their actions. In 2007, the widow of Officer Faulkner coauthored a book with Philadelphia radio journalist Michael Smerconish entitled ''Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Pain, Loss, and Injustice.'' The book was part memoir of Faulkner's widow, part discussion in which they chronicled Abu-Jamal's trial and discussed evidence for his conviction, and part discussion on supporting the death penalty. J. Patrick O'Connor, editor and publisher of crimemagazine.com, argues in his book ''The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal'' that the preponderance of evidence establishes that it was not Abu-Jamal but a passenger in Abu-Jamal's brother's car, Kenneth Freeman, who killed Faulkner, and that the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's Office framed Abu-Jamal.

In 2010, investigative journalists Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington reproduced the shooting in tests that produced results that they claimed were inconsistent with the case against Abu-Jamal. According to them, shots that missed Faulkner should have produced marks visible on the pavement. An expert photo analyst found no such marks visible in the highest-available-quality photo of the part of the crime scene where the body was found. A ballistics expert medical examiner said that the idea that police could have failed to recognise such marks at the crime scene was "absolute nonsense". Abu-Jamal's lawyer said that the results constituted "extraordinarily important new evidence that establishes clearly that the prosecutor and the Philadelphia Police Department were engaged in presenting knowingly false testimony".

See also

Alfonzo Giordano

''In Prison My Whole Life'' - 2008 documentary film

References

External links

Video

1996 video of death row visitation interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal

Competing Films Offer Differing Views - video report by ''Democracy Now!''

Supporter groups

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (New York City)

Partisan Defense Committee

Journalists for Mumia

Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal

Opponent groups

Summary of the prosecution 's case

Fraternal Order of Police news, press releases, and communications relating to Mumia Abu-Jamal

Justice For Daniel Faulkner

Category:1954 births Category:African American journalists Category:African American writers Category:American anti–death penalty activists Category:American columnists Category:American people convicted of murdering police officers Category:American newspaper reporters and correspondents Category:American political writers Category:American prisoners sentenced to death Category:American radio reporters and correspondents Category:Black Panther Party members Category:California State University, Dominguez Hills alumni Category:Crime in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:France–United States relations Category:Goddard College alumni Category:Living people Category:Marxist journalists Category:Pennsylvania political activists Category:People convicted of murder by Pennsylvania Category:Prisoners sentenced to death by Pennsylvania Category:Writers from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

ca:Mumia Abu-Jamal da:Mumia Abu-Jamal de:Mumia Abu-Jamal es:Mumia Abu-Jamal eo:Mumia Abu Jamal eu:Mumia Abu-Jamal fr:Mumia Abu-Jamal gl:Mumia Abu-Jamal it:Mumia Abu-Jamal he:מומיה אבו-ג'אמאל lv:Mumija Abu-Džamals nl:Mumia Abu-Jamal ja:ムミア・アブ・ジャマール no:Mumia Abu-Jamal pl:Mumia Abu-Jamal pt:Mumia Abu-Jamal ru:Мумия Абу-Джамал simple:Mumia Abu-Jamal sr:Mumija Abu-Džamal sh:Mumia Abu-Jamal sv:Mumia Abu-Jamal

name	Toni Morrison
awards
birth date	February 18, 1931
birth place	Lorain, Ohio, United States
occupation	Novelist, Writer
genre	African American literature
notableworks	''Beloved'', ''Song of Solomon''
influences	James Baldwin, William Faulkner, Doris Lessing, Herman Melville
influenced	Bell Hooks , Octavia Butler
signature	TMorrisonsignature.JPG }}

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931) is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are ''The Bluest Eye'', ''Song of Solomon'' and ''Beloved''. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera, ''Margaret Garner'', first performed in 2005.

Early life and career

Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, to George and Ramah (Willis) Wofford, the second of four children in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read constantly; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Morrison's father told her numerous folktales of the black community (a method of storytelling that would later work its way into Morrison's writings).

In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University, where she received a B.A. in English in 1953. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English from Cornell University in 1955, for which she wrote a thesis on suicide in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (1955–57), then returned to Howard to teach English. She became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

In 1958 she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect and fellow faculty member at Howard University. They had two children, Harold and Slade, and divorced in 1964. After the divorce she moved to Syracuse, New York, where she worked as a textbook editor. A year and a half later, she went to work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House. As an editor, Morrison played a vital role in bringing black literature into the mainstream, editing books by authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Gayl Jones.

Writing career

Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. She later developed the story as her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'' (1970). She wrote it while raising two children and teaching at Howard. In 2000 it was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club.

In 1975 her novel ''Sula'' (1973) was nominated for the National Book Award. Her third novel, ''Song of Solomon'' (1977), brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since Richard Wright's ''Native Son'' in 1940. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 1987 Morrison's novel ''Beloved'' became a critical success. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, a number of writers protested over the omission. Shortly afterward, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the American Book Award. That same year, Morrison took a visiting professorship at Bard College.

''Beloved'' was adapted into the 1998 film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the libretto for a new opera, ''Margaret Garner'', with music by Richard Danielpour. In May 2006, ''The New York Times Book Review'' named ''Beloved'' the best American novel published in the previous twenty-five years.

In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." She is currently the last American to have been awarded the honor. Shortly afterward, a fire destroyed her Rockland County, New York home.

In 1996 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Morrison's lecture, entitled "The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations," began with the aphorism, "Time, it seems, has no future." She cautioned against the misuse of history to diminish expectations of the future.

Morrison was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which is awarded to a writer "who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."

Although her novels typically concentrate on black women, Morrison does not identify her works as feminist. She has stated that she thinks "it's off-putting to some readers, who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things."

In addition to her novels, Morrison has also co-written books for children with her younger son, Slade Morrison, who works as a painter and musician. Slade died on December 22, 2010, aged 45.

Later life

Morrison taught English at two branches of the State University of New York. In 1984 she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany, The State University of New York. From 1989 until her retirement in 2006, Morrison held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University.

Though based in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton, Morrison did not regularly offer writing workshops to students after the late 1990s, a fact that earned her some criticism. Rather, she has conceived and developed the prestigious ''Princeton Atelier'', a program that brings together talented students with critically acclaimed, world-famous artists. Together the students and the artists produce works of art that are presented to the public after a semester of collaboration. In her position at Princeton, Morrison used her insights to encourage not merely new and emerging writers, but artists working to develop new forms of art through interdisciplinary play and cooperation.

At its 1979 commencement ceremonies, Barnard College awarded her its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction. Oxford University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in June 2005.

In November 2006, Morrison visited the Louvre Museum in Paris as the second in its "Grand Invité" program to guest-curate a month-long series of events across the arts on the theme of "The Foreigner's Home." Inspired by her curatorship, Morrison returned to Princeton in Fall 2008 to lead a small seminar, also entitled "The Foreigner's Home."

In May 2010, Morrison appeared at PEN World Voices for a conversation with Marlene van Niekerk and Kwame Anthony Appiah about South African literature, and specifically, van Niekerk's novel, ''Agaat.''

In May 2011, Morrison received an Honorable Doctor of Letters Degree from Rutgers University during commencement where she delivered a speech of the "pursuit of life, liberty, meaningfulness, integrity, and truth".

She is currently a member of the editorial board of ''The Nation'' magazine.

Politics

In writing about the impeachment in 1998, Morrison wrote that, since Whitewater, Bill Clinton had been mistreated because of his "Blackness": The phrase "our first Black president" was adopted as a positive by Bill Clinton supporters. When the Congressional Black Caucus honored the former president at its dinner in Washington D.C. on September 29, 2001, for instance, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the chair, told the audience that Clinton "took so many initiatives he made us think for a while we had elected the first black president."

In the context of the 2008 Democratic Primary campaign, Morrison stated to ''Time'' magazine: "People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race." In the Democratic primary contest for the 2008 presidential race, Morrison endorsed Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton, though expressing admiration and respect for the latter.

Works

Novels

''The Bluest Eye'' (1970; ISBN 0-452-28706-5)

''Sula'' (1974; ISBN 1-4000-3343-8)

''Song of Solomon'' (1977; ISBN 1-4000-3342-X)

''Tar Baby'' (1981; ISBN 1-4000-3344-6)

''Beloved'' (1987; ISBN 1-4000-3341-1)

''Jazz'' (1992; ISBN 1-4000-7621-8)

''Paradise'' (1999; ISBN 0-679-43374-0)

''Love'' (2003; ISBN 0-375-40944-0)

''A Mercy'' (2008; ISBN 978-0-307-26423-7)

Children's literature (with Slade Morrison)

''The Big Box'' (1999)

''The Book of Mean People'' (2002)

Short fiction

"Recitatif" (1983)

Plays

''Dreaming Emmett'' (performed 1986)

''Desdemona'' (first performed 15 May 2011 in Vienna)

Libretti

''Margaret Garner'' (first performed May 2005)

Non-fiction

''The Black Book'' (1974)

''Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination'' (1992)

''Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality'' (editor) (1992)

''Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case'' (co-editor) (1997)

''Remember: The Journey to School Integration'' (April 2004)

''What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction'', edited by Carolyn C. Denard (April 2008)

''Burn This Book: Essay Anthology'', editor (2009)

Articles

"Introduction." Mark Twain, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn''. [1885] ''The Oxford Mark Twain'', edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. xxxii-xli.

Awards and nominations

Awards

Graffiti of Toni Morrison in the city of Vitoria, in Spain|thumb|right|210px

1977 National Book Critics Circle Award for ''Song of Solomon''

1977 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award

1987-88 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

1988 Helmerich Award

1988 American Book Award for ''Beloved''

1988 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for ''Beloved''

1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for ''Beloved''

1989 MLA Commonwealth Award in Literature

1993 Nobel Prize for Literature

1993 Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris

1994 Condorcet Medal, Paris

1994 Pearl Buck Award

1994 Rhegium Julii Prize for Literature

1996 Jefferson Lecture

1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

2000 National Humanities Medal

UUA:Frederic G. Melcher Book Award (named for an editor of Publishers Weekly), 1988 for "Beloved". A remark in her acceptance speech that “there is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby” honoring the memory of the human beings forced into slavery and brought to the United States. “There’s no small bench by the road,” led the Toni Morrison Society to begin installing benches at significant sites in the history of slavery in America; the first “bench by the road” was dedicated July 26, 2008 on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the point of entry for approximately 40 percent of the enslaved Africans brought to British North America.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Toni Morrison on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Nominations

Grammy Awards 2008 Best Spoken Word Album for Children - "Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?"

See also

American Literature

African American literature

Black Nobel Prize laureates

List of female Nobel laureates

Good Hair (African American Usage)

References

External links

Toni Morrison's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project

Literary Encyclopedia biography

Voices from the Gaps biography

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993

Toni Morrison at Random House Australia

Review of A Mercy - Centre for Public Christianity

Web page of Toni Morrison, live and books, CZ

Category:1931 births Category:Living people Category:African American academics Category:African American writers Category:African American novelists Category:American novelists Category:American women writers Category:American feminist writers Category:American children's writers Category:African American female writers Category:Opera librettists Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:American Nobel laureates Category:Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Cornell University alumni Category:Howard University alumni Category:Honorary Fellows of St Hilda's College, Oxford Category:Writers from Ohio Category:People from Houston, Texas Category:People from Syracuse, New York Category:People from New York City Category:People from Lorain, Ohio Category:Magic realism writers Category:Women novelists Category:Women Nobel Laureates Category:National Humanities Medal recipients Category:Postmodern writers

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name	Zora Neale Hurston
birth date	January 07, 1891
birth place	Notasulga, Alabama, United States
death date	January 28, 1960
death place	Fort Pierce, Florida, United States
occupation	Folklorist, anthropologist, novelist, short story writer
notableworks	''Their Eyes Were Watching God''
influenced	Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith
website	http://www.zoranealehurston.com}}

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel ''Their Eyes Were Watching God''.

Biography

Early life

Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston (née Potts). Her father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer, and carpenter, and her mother was a school teacher. , she was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama in 1891 (Jan. 7, 1891), where her father grew up and her grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church. Her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, the first all-Black town to be incorporated in the United States, when she was three. Hurston said the always felt that Eatonville was "home" to her and sometimes claimed it as her birthplace Her father later became mayor of the town, which Hurston would glorify in her stories as a place where African Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. In 1901 some northern schoolteachers visited Eatonville and gave Hurston a number of books that opened her mind to literature, and this may be why she sometimes describes her "birth" as taking place in that year. Hurston spent the remainder of her childhood in Eatonville, and describes the experience of growing up in Eatonville in her 1928 essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me".

In 1904, Hurston's mother died and her father remarried, to Matte Moge almost immediately, considered something of a minor scandal as it was rumored he had relations with Moge before Lucy died. Hurston's father and new stepmother sent her away to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, but they eventually stopped paying her tuition and the school expelled her. She later worked as a maid to the lead singer in a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company. In 1917, Hurston began attending Morgan Academy, the high school division of the historically African American Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland. It was at this time, and apparently to qualify for a free high-school education (as well, perhaps to reflect her literary birth), that the 26-year-old Hurston began claiming 1901 as her date of birth. She graduated from Morgan Academy in 1918.

College

In 1918, Hurston began undergraduate studies at Howard University, where she became one of the earliest initiates of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and co-founded ''The Hilltop'', the University's student newspaper. While there she took courses in Spanish, English, Greek and public speaking and earned an Associate's Degree in 1920. In 1921 she wrote an essay which qualified her to become a member of Alaine Locke's literary club, ''The Stylus''. Hurston left Howard in 1924 and in 1925 was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she was the college's sole black student. Hurston received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927, when she was 36. While she was at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research with noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University.

Adulthood

In 1927, Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and former classmate at Howard who would later become a physician, but the marriage ended in 1931. In 1939, while Hurston was working for the WPA, she married Albert Price, a 23-year-old fellow WPA employee, and 25 years her junior, but this marriage ended after only a few months.

She lived in a cottage in Eau Gallie, Florida, twice, once in 1929 and again in 1951.

During the 1930s, Hurston was a resident of Westfield, New Jersey, where Langston Hughes was among her neighbors.

In later life, in addition to continuing her literary career, Hurston served on the faculty of North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) in Durham, North Carolina. In 1956 Hurston was bestowed the Bethune-Cookman College Award for Education and Human Relations in recognition of her vast achievements, and the English Department at Bethune-Cookman College remains dedicated to preserving her cultural legacy.

Anthropological and folkloric fieldwork

Hurston traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research. Her work in the South, sponsored from 1928 to 1932 by Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy philanthropist, produced ''Mules and Men'' in 1935, often regarded as a folklore classic, as well as the base material for novels like ''Jonah's Gourd Vine'' published in 1934.

In 1936 and 1937 she traveled to Jamaica and to Haiti from which her anthropological work ''Go Tell My Horse'' published in 1938 emerged.

She also lived in Honduras, at the north coastal town of Puerto Cortés from October 1947 to February 1948. Her trip to Central America was apparently occasioned by the idea of locating either Mayan ruins or vestiges of some other as yet undiscovered civilization. While in Puerto Cortés, she wrote much of ''Seraph on the Suwanee'', a book which had nothing to do with Honduras, however. Hurston was interested in the poly ethnic nature of the population in the region (many of whom, such as the Miskito Zambu and Garifuna were in fact of African ancestry).

Later years

In 1948, Hurston was falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy, and although the case was dismissed after Hurston presented evidence that she was in Honduras when the crime supposedly occurred in the U.S., her personal life was seriously disrupted by the scandal.

Hurston spent her last decade as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. She worked in a library in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and as a substitute teacher and maid in Fort Pierce.

Death

During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she suffered a stroke and died of hypertensive heart disease. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest cemetery in Fort Pierce. In 1973 African-American novelist Alice Walker and literary scholar Charlotte Hunt found an unmarked grave in the general area where Hurston had been buried and decided to mark it as hers.

Literary career

1920s

When Hurston arrived in New York City in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was at its peak, and she soon became one of the writers at its center. Shortly before she entered Barnard, Hurston's short story “Spunk” was selected for ''The New Negro'', a landmark anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays focusing on African and African American art and literature. In 1926, a group of young black writers including Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, calling themselves the Niggerati, produced a literary magazine called ''Fire!!'' that featured many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

1930s

By the mid-1930s, Hurston had published several short stories and the critically acclaimed ''Mules and Men'' (1935), a groundbreaking work of "literary anthropology" documenting African American folklore. In 1930, she also collaborated with Langston Hughes on ''Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts'', a play that was never finished, although it was published posthumously in 1991.

In 1937, Hurston was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti. ''Tell My Horse'' (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying African rituals in Jamaica and voudon rituals in Haiti. Hurston also translated her anthropological work into the performing arts, and her folk revue, The Great Day premiered at the John Golden Theatre in New York in 1932.

Hurston's first three novels were also published in the 1930s: ''Jonah's Gourd Vine'' (1934); ''Their Eyes Were Watching God'' (1937), written during her fieldwork in Haiti and considered her masterwork; and ''Moses, Man of the Mountain'' (1939).

1940s/1950s

In the 1940s, Hurston's work was published in such periodicals as ''The American Mercury'' and ''The Saturday Evening Post''. Her last published novel, ''Seraph on the Suwanee'', notable principally for its focus on white characters, was published in 1948. It explores images of 'white trash' women. Jackson (2000) argues that Hurston's meditation on abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities among poor whites reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s.

In 1954, Hurston was assigned by the ''Pittsburgh Courier'' to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. She also contributed to ''Woman in the Suwannee County Jail'', a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie. In 2008, The Library of America selected excerpts from this work for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.

Public obscurity

Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of cultural and political reasons.

Many readers objected to the representation of African American dialect in Hurston's novels, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. Her stylistic choices in terms of dialogue were influenced by her academic experiences. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research. For example, a character in ''Jonah's Gourd Vine'' expresses herself in this manner:

:''"Dat's a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin' dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah'll wash yo' tub uh 'gator guts and dat quick."''

Several of Hurston's literary contemporaries criticized Hurston's use of dialect as a caricature of African American culture rooted in a racist tradition. More recently, many critics have praised Hurston's skillful use of idiomatic speech. In particular, a number of writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance were critical of Hurston's later writings, on the basis that they did not agree with or further the position of the overall movement. One particular criticism came from Richard Wright in his review of ''Their Eyes Were Watching God'':

:... The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is "quaint," the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the "superior" race.

During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the pre-eminent African American author was Richard Wright. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms, as someone who had become disenchanted with communism, using the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular African American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, were also aligned with Wright's vision. Hurston's work, which did not engage these political issues, did not fit in with this struggle. In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government, and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians.

Posthumous recognition

An article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", by Alice Walker was published in the March 1975 issue of ''Ms.'' magazine. This article revived interest in her work. The reemergence of Hurston's work coincided with the emergence of authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Walker herself, whose works are centered on African American experiences and include, but do not necessarily focus upon, racial struggle.

Biographies of Hurston include ''Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography'' by Robert Hemenway, ''Wrapped in Rainbows'' by Valerie Boyd, and ''Speak So You Can Speak Again'' by Hurston's niece, Lucy Anne Hurston. Her hometown of Eatonville, Florida celebrates her life in an annual festival.

In 2001, "Every Tongue Got to Confess" was published posthumously. The book was a collection of field materials Hurston had gathered in the late 1920s to create her book "Mules and Men". Originally titled "Folktales from the Gulf States", filmmaker Kristy Andersen had discovered the previously unknown collection of folk tales while researching the Smithsonian archives when they were placed in computer catalogs in 1997.

Hurston's house in Fort Pierce is a National Historic Landmark. thumb|Zora Neale Hurston, photo by Carl Van Vechten (1938) Fort Pierce celebrates Hurston annually through various events such as ''Hattitudes'', birthday parties, and a several-day festival at the end of April known as Zora Fest. Her life and legacy are also celebrated every year in Eatonville, the town that inspired her, at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Politics

John McWhorter has called Hurston "America's favorite black conservative" while David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito have argued that she can better be characterized as a "libertarian." She was a Republican who was generally sympathetic to the foreign policy non-interventionism of the Old Right and a fan of Booker T. Washington's self-help politics. She disagreed with the philosophies (including Communism and the New Deal) supported by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, who was in the 1930s a supporter of the Soviet Union and praised it in several of his poems. Despite much common ground with the Old Right in domestic and foreign policy, Hurston was not a social conservative. Her writings show skepticism toward traditional religion and affinity for feminist individualism. In this respect, her views were similar to two libertarian novelists who were her contemporaries, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson.

In 1952, Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert A. Taft. Like Taft, Hurston was against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. She also shared his opposition to Roosevelt's and Truman's interventionist foreign policy. In the original draft of her autobiography, ''Dust Tracks on a Road'', Hurston compared the United States government to a "fence" in stolen goods and to a Mafia-like protection racket. Hurston thought it ironic that the same “people who claim that it is a noble thing to die for freedom and democracy ... wax frothy if anyone points out the inconsistency of their morals. ... We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own.” She was scathing about those who sought "freedoms" for those abroad, but denied it to people in their home countries: Roosevelt "can call names across an ocean" for his Four Freedoms, but he did not have “the courage to speak even softly at home.” When Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, she called him “the Butcher of Asia.”

Hurston opposed the Supreme Court ruling in the ''Brown v. Board of Education'' case of 1954. She felt that if separate schools were truly equal (and she believed that they were rapidly becoming so) educating black students in physical proximity to white students would not result in better education. In addition, she worried about the demise of black schools and black teachers as a way to pass on cultural tradition to future generations of African-Americans. She voiced this opposition in a letter, "Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix", that was published in the ''Orlando Sentinel'' in August 1955. Hurston had not reversed her long-time opposition to segregation. Rather, she feared that the Court's ruling could become a precedent for an all-powerful federal government to undermine individual liberty on a broad range of issues in the future. Hurston also opposed preferential treatment for African-Americans, saying:

If I say a whole system must be upset for me to win, I am saying that I cannot sit in the game, and that safer rules must be made to give me a chance. I repudiate that. If others are in there, deal me a hand and let me see what I can make of it, even though I know some in there are dealing from the bottom and cheating like hell in other ways.

Bibliography

''Color Struck'' (1925) in ''Opportunity Magazine'', play

''Sweat'' (1926), Short story.

''How It Feels to Be Colored Me'' (1928), Short story.

"Hoodoo in America" (1931) in ''The Journal of American Folklore''

''The Gilded Six-Bits'' (1933)

''Jonah's Gourd Vine'' (1934), novel

''Mules and Men'' (1935), non-fiction

''Tell My Horse'' (1937)

''Their Eyes Were Watching God'' (1937), novel

''Tell My Horse'' (1938), non-fiction

''Moses, Man of the Mountain'' (1939), novel

''Dust Tracks on a Road'' (1942), autobiography

''Seraph on the Suwanee'' (1948), novel

"What White Publishers Won't Print", ''Negro Digest'' (1950)

''I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader'' (edited by Alice Walker; introduction by Mary Helen Washington) (1979)

''Sanctified Church'' (1981)

''Spunk: Selected Stories'' (1985)

''Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life'' (play, with Langston Hughes; edited with introductions by George Houston Bass and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the complete story of the Mule bone controversy.) (1991)

''The Complete Stories'' (introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke) (1995)

''Barracoon'' (1999)

''Collected Plays'' (introduction by Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell) (2008)

Published as

''Novels & Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Moses, Man of the Mountain, Seraph on the Suwanee, Selected Stories'' (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.) (Library of America, 1995) ISBN 978-0-94045083-7

''Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles'' (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.) (Library of America, 1995) ISBN 978-0-94045084-4

Film and television

In 1989 PBS aired a drama based on Hurston's life titled ''Zora is My Name!''.

The 2004 film ''Brother to Brother'', set in part during the Harlem Renaissance, featured Hurston (portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis).

''Their Eyes Were Watching God'' was adapted for a 2005 film of the same title by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, with a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks. The film starred Halle Berry as Janie Starks.

On April 9, 2008 PBS broadcast a 90-minute documentary ''Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun'' written and produced by filmmaker Kristy Andersen, as part of the ''American Masters'' series.

In 2009, Hurston was featured in a 90-minute documentary about the WPA Writers' Project titled ''Soul of a People: Writing America's Story'', which premiered on the Smithsonian Channel. Her work in Florida during the 1930s is also highlighted in the companion book, ''Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America''.

See also

African American literature

Paramour Rights

Ruby McCollum

Kevin Brown (author)

Notes

References

Abcarian, Richard and Marvin Klotz. "Zora Neale Hurston." In ''Literature: The Human Experience'', 9th edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006: 1562-3.

Baym, Nina (ed.) ,"Zora Neale Hurston." In ''The Norton Anthology of American Literature'', 6th edition, Vol. D. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2003: 1506-1507.

Beito, David T. “Zora Neale Hurston," American Enterprise 6 (September/October 1995), 61-3.

Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster, ''Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the State, and Liberty.'' Independent Review 12 (Spring 2008).

Boyd, Valerie (2003). ''Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston''. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-684-84230-0.

Ellis, C. Arthur ''Zora Hurston And The Strange Case Of Ruby McCollum'', 1st edition. Lutz, FL: Gadfly Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-0982094006.

Hemenway, Robert E. ''Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography''. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1977. ISBN 0-252-00807-3.

Hemenway, Robert E. "Zora Neale Hurston." In ''The Heath Anthology of American Literature'', 5th edition, Vol. D. Paul Lauter and Richard Yarborough (eds.). New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006: 1577-1578.

Jones, Sharon L. ''A Critical Companion to Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Reference to her Life and Work'' (New York: Facts on File, 2009)

Kaplan, Carla (ed.). ''Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters''. New York: Random House, 2003.

Kraut, Anthea, "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham," ''Theatre Journal'' 55 (2003): 433–50.

Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt, "Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)." In '' Women and Tradition: A Neglected Group of Folklorists '' Hilda Ellis Davidson and Carmen Blacker (eds.). Durham, NC, Carolina Academic Press, 2000: 157-72.

Tucker, Cynthia. "Zora! Celebrated Storyteller Would Have Laughed at Controversy Over Her Origins. She Was Born In Notasulga, Alabama but Eatonville Fla., Claims Her As Its Own", article documents Kristy Andersen's research into Hurston's birthplace; ''Atlanta Journal and Constitution'', January 22, 1995.

Visweswaran, Kamala. ''Fictions of Feminist Ethnography.'' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8166-2336-8

Walker, Alice. "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", ''Ms. Magazine'', (March 1975): 74-79, 84-89.

External links

Howard University

*Zora Neale Hurston collection in the Manuscript Division of the Howard Archive

Library of Congress

*ZORA NEALE HURSTON:RECORDINGS, MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND EPHEMERA

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

*Zora Neale Hurston Collection

State Library and Archives of Florida

* Sound recordings of Hurston in the 1930s

* Zora Neale Hurston, the WPA in Florida, and the Cross City Turpentine Camp

University of Central Florida

*Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive

University of Florida

*Smathers Library Zora Neale Hurston Collection Finding Guide

*University of Florida Digital Collections Archive

*University of Florida Zora Neale Hurston Exhibit Website

Yale University

*Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Zora Neale Hurston Collection

Zora Neale Hurston Trust

Voices from the Gaps biography - University of Minnesota

Zora Neale Hurston from the ''Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography''

Zora Neale Hurston Trust, operated by Lucy Anne Hurston (Zora Neale Hurston's niece) and Lois Hurston Gaston (Zora Neale Hurston's great niece, who represents the remaining heirs)

Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities (ZORA! Festival)

The Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress

Zora Neale Hurston biography, quotes, family, multimedia

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