The James Logan Courier http://jameslogancourier.org/ News from James Logan High School en-us Nucleus CMS v3.24 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://jameslogancourier.org//nucleus/nucleus2.gif The James Logan Courier http://jameslogancourier.org/ "To talk, therefore, of a 'pure' race or a 'pure' ancestral line is abysmal ignorance." Joel Augustus Rogers http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6443
From wikipedia:
Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880 — March 26, 1966) was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and historian who contributed to the history of Africa and the African diaspora, especially the history of African Americans in the United States. His research spanned the academic fields of history, sociology and anthropology. He challenged prevailing ideas about race, demonstrated the connections between civilizations, and traced African achievements. He was one of the greatest popularizers of African history in the 20th century.

Read Joel Augustus Rogers: Negro historian in history, time, and space, free from the Free Library.Early life and education
Joel Augustus Rogers was born 6 September 1880 (some sources say 1883 ) in Negril, Jamaica. One of eleven children, he was the son of mixed-race parents who were a minister and schoolteacher. His parents were not able to afford to give Rogers or his ten siblings more than a rudimentary education, but stressed the importance of learning.

Emigration and career
Rogers emigrated from Jamaica to the United States in 1906, where he settled in Harlem, New York. There he lived most of his life. He was there during the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African-American artistic and intellectual life in numerous fields. Rogers became a close personal friend of the Harlem-based intellectual and activist Hubert Harrison.

While living in Chicago for a time in the 1920s, Rogers worked as a Pullman porter and as a reporter for the Chicago Enterprise. His job of Pullman porter allowed Rogers to travel and observe a wide range of people. Through this travel, Rogers was able to feed his appetite for knowledge, by using various libraries in the cities which he visited. Rogers self-published the results of his research in several books.

From "Superman" to Man
Rogers' first book From "Superman" to Man, self-published in 1917, attacked notions of African inferiority. From "Superman" to Man is a polemic against the ignorance that fuels racism. Its title is a twist on contemporary works, both George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman and Nietzsche’s idea of the “Superman.” The central plot revolves around a debate between a Pullman porter and a white racist Southern politician. Rogers used this debate to air many of his personal philosophies and to debunk stereotypes about black people and white racial superiority. The porter’s arguments and theories are pulled from a plethora of sources, classical and contemporary, and run the gamut from history and anthropology to biology. Many of the ideas that permeated Rogers’ later work can be seen germinating in From "Superman" to Man. Rogers addresses issues such as the lack of scientific support for the idea of race, black historical vindicationism, and the fact of intermarriage and unions among peoples throughout history.

Newspaper career
In the 1920s Rogers worked as a journalist on the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Enterprise. He was a sub-editor of Marcus Garvey's short-lived Daily Negro Times. As a newspaper correspondent, he covered such events as the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia for the New York Amsterdam News. He wrote for a variety of black newspapers and journals: Crisis, American Mercury, The Messenger, the Negro World and Survey Graphic. One of his interviews was with Marcus Garvey in prison (New York Amsterdam News, 17 November 1926).

Rogers served as the only black US war correspondent during World War II.

Other works
Rogers’ work was concerned with "the Great Black Man" theory of history. This theory presented history, specifically black history, as a mural of achievements by prominent black people. Rogers devoted a significant amount of his professional life to unearthing facts about people of African ancestry. He intended these findings to be a refutation of contemporary racist beliefs about the inferiority of blacks. Books such as 100 Amazing Facts about the Negro, Sex and Race, and World’s Great Men of Color, all described remarkable black people throughout the ages and cited significant achievements of black people.

Rogers commented on the partial black ancestry of some prominent Europeans, including Alexander Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas, père. Similarly, Rogers was among those who asserted that a direct ancestor of the British royal family, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had a remote ancestor who was of African origin.

Rogers’ theories about race, sex and color can be found in the books Nature Knows No Color-Line, World’s Great Men of Color and the pamphlet Five Negro Presidents, all of which deal with the ideas of race, sex and color. In the latter, he provided what he said was evidence that there had been 19th and 20th century presidents of the United States who had partial black ancestry. His research was superficial and poorly sourced.

Rogers surmised that a large percentage of ethnic differences were the result of sociological factors. However, in Rogers’ opinion, often the differences between groups were attributed primarily to physical differences such as race. Rogers deals with the themes of race and sex in the eponymous Sex and Race and also in Nature Knows No Color-Line. Rogers’ research in these works was directed to examining miscegenation and how that has left a black “strain” in Europe and the Americas.

In Nature Knows No Color-Line, Rogers examined the origins of racial hierarchy and the color problem. Rogers stated that the origins of the race problem had never been adequately examined or discussed. Rogers believed that color prejudice generally evolved from issues of domination and power between two physiologically different groups. According to Rogers, color prejudice was then used a rationale for domination, subjugation and warfare. Societies developed myths and prejudices in order to pursue their own interests at the expense of other groups. Rogers was trying to show that there is nothing innate about color prejudice; that there is no natural distaste for darker skin by lighter-skinned people; and that there is no natural aversion for lighter skin by darker-skinned people.

Within these works, Rogers questioned the concept of race, the origins of racial differentiation, and the root of the “color problem.” Rogers felt that the “color problem” was that race was used as social, political and economic determining factors.

Philosophy and viewpoint
Rogers traveled extensively on his quest for knowledge, which often took him directly to the source. While traveling in Europe, he frequented libraries, museums, and castles, finding sources that helped him prove African ancestry and history. He challenged the biased viewpoint of Eurocentric historians and anthropologists.

Rogers gathered what he called “the bran of history”. The bran of history was the uncollected, unexamined history of the world, and his interest was the history of black people. Rogers intended that the neglected parts of history would become part of the mainstream body of Western history. He saw black inclusion in white historical discourses as helping to bridge racial divides. His scholarship was meant to shed light on hitherto unexamined areas of Africana history. This historical goal made Rogers a vindicationist scholar, attempting to combat the stereotypes of inferiority that were attributed to black people.

Rogers asserted that the color of skin did not determine intellectual genius, and that Africans had contributed more to the world than was previously acknowledged. He publicized the great black civilizations that had flourished in Africa during antiquity. He devoted his scholarship to vindicating a place for African people within Western history. According to Rogers, many ancient African civilizations had been primal molders of Western civilization and culture.

With these assertions, Rogers was attempting to point out the absurdity of racial divisions. Rogers' belief in one race - humanity - precluded the idea of several different ethnic races. In this, Rogers was a humanist. Rogers used vindicationist history as a tool to bolster his ideas about humanism. Rogers used his scholarship to prove his underlying humanistic thesis: that people were one large family without racial boundaries.

Rogers was self-financed, self-educated, and self-published. Some critics have focused on Rogers' lack of a formal education as a hindrance to producing scholarly work; others suggested Rogers' autodidacticism freed him from many academic and methodological restrictions. He made himself free to tackle the difficult racial issues with which he dealt. As an autodidact, Rogers followed his research into various disciplines that more formally educated scholars may have been loath to attempt. His works are complete with detailed references. That he documented his work to encourage scrutiny of his facts was a testament to his due diligence, work ethic and commitment to not only African people, but the world, its history and culture.

Rogers articulated ideas about race that were informed by anthropology and biology, rather than social convention. He used vindicationism not as end in itself, but as a tool to underscore his humanist beliefs, and to illustrate the unity of humanity as a people. He discarded the non-scientific definition of race and pursued his own ideas about humanity’s interconnectedness. Thus, although the work of Rogers has often been relegated to the controversial genre of Afrocentric history, his main contribution to African scholarship was his nuanced analysis of the concept of race.

Legacy and honors
Rogers was a member of professional associations such as the Paris Society of Anthropology, the American Geographical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Academy of Political Science.

Rogers, in the words of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, "looked at the history of people of African origin, and showed how their history is an inseparable part of the history of mankind."

Joel Augustus Rogers died in New York on March 26, 1966 in New York City. He was survived by his wife Helga M. Rogers.]]> In Quotes http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6443 Mon, 6 Sep 2010 03:36:00 -1000 Tuesday's Bulletin http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6439
MISCELLANEOUS
Attention all students: The Attendance Office is no longer located at the windows in the front office. If you have an attendance issue, report to your House Office.

Parking: Student parking is in the swim center lot, in the spaces marked by white lines only. Parking permits are available at the Main Office window, during posted hours. There is limited staff parking in the new lot next to the Performing Arts Center. Please park in your designated spots. Example: Clerical is reserved for clerical employees only. There are a number of generic staff spots.

All students: If you were issued a locker and you don’t want it or won’t use it, please turn it in to Mrs. Whitaker in the Main Office.

If you have an OFF CAMPUS ROP class, you MUST get your orange ROP sticker and bus information from Mrs. Hart in the Career Center before leaving the Logan campus.

Regular Book Room hours are 8:15 a.m. to 3:45 daily before school, after school and at lunch. Other times not listed you may drop in if you have a pass from your teacher.

Make up pictures will be taken on Friday, September 10th, beginning at 7:30 a.m. in the Pavilion Foyer. Please be there if you haven’t yet had your picture taken.

ACTIVITIES
If you are interested in learning Mexican/Latino Folklorico Dance and would like to join the Ballet Folklorico, orientation meeting is Wednesday, September 8th at 3:45 in the Pavilion Dance Studio. For more info, see Mr. Huertas in House 1.

Get in Shape! Join Cross Country. See Coach Webb on the track after school.

SOPHOMORES
Sophomores: interested in helping make this year’s homecoming float? Please come to the meeting on Wednesday, September 8th, after school in Room 64.

SENIORS
Seniors, do you want your portrait in the yearbook? If so, the deadline to have your photo taken at Prestige is Friday, October 1st.

CLUBS
Come to the Youth Alive Christian Club today after school in Room 418.
]]> Daily Bulletin http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6439 Sun, 5 Sep 2010 10:19:00 -1000 Sunday's Funny http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6441 It's a Lulu by Lulu Zhong, Courier Graphics Editor
©2010 Lulu Zhong/Courier Graphics
Are you a James Logan student artist who'd like to have your work published in The Courier? Then drop by our office, room 509, during your lunch period and get it done! Are you a comic artist who's not a James Logan student, but would like to have your comic featured in The Courier anyway? Drop us a line at courier@nhusd.k12.ca.us and we'll discuss it.]]> Comics http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6441 Sun, 5 Sep 2010 07:03:00 -1000 " I have drunk deep of the waters of my ancestors." Larry Neal http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6442
From wikipedia:
Larry Neal or Lawerence Neal (September 5, 1937 – January 1981) was a scholar of African-American theatre. He is well known for his contributions to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Neal was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1961 and received a master's degree in 1963 from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1968 to 1969, Neal taught at the City College of New York. The following year he taught at Wesleyan University. He taught at Yale University from 1970 to 1975. Neal is known for working with Amiri Baraka to open the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. His early writings—including "The Negro in the Theatre" (1964), "Cultural Front" (1965), and "The Black Arts Movement" (1968)—were influential in defining and describing the role of the arts in the Black Power era. His essays and poems appeared in publications such as Liberator, Drama Critque, Black Theatre, Negro Digest, Performance, and Black World. He also uncovered Ed Bullins's plagiarism of Albert Camus's play The Just Assassins. Neal died from a heart attack in 1981.

Read more about Larry Neal and his books at the African American Literature Book Club.]]> In Quotes http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6442 Sun, 5 Sep 2010 06:24:00 -1000 The Week in Editorial Cartoons http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6438 ]]> Opinion http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6438 Sat, 4 Sep 2010 04:37:00 -1000 “Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” Richard Wright http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=5325
Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an African-American author.

Wright, the grandson of former slaves, was born on the Rucker plantation in Roxie, Mississippi, in Franklin County, just outside of Natchez.

His family soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, his father Nathaniel, a former sharecropper, abandoned the family because of a hard time finding a job. His mother, a schoolteacher, had to support herself and her children. In 1914 Ella Wright became ill, and the two brothers were sent to Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage. The mother then moved with her children to Jackson, Mississippi, to live with relatives. In Jackson, Wright grew up and attended public high school. In 1916, Wright, his brother, and their mother returned to Mississippi, moving in with Margaret Wilson, Wright’s grandmother.

Read Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices, free from Google Books.Later, the family moved in with Wright’s aunt and uncle in Elaine, Arkansas, but left after whites murdered Wright’s uncle Silas Hoskins in 1916. The family fled to West Helena, Arkansas, where they lived in fear in rented rooms for several weeks. Mrs. Wright took the boys to Jackson, Mississippi, for several months in 1917, but they returned to West Helena by the winter of 1918. Further family disintegration occurred after Mrs. Wright suffered a stroke in 1919. Wright reluctantly chose to live with Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he could be near his mother, but restrictions placed on him by his aunt and uncle made him an emotional wreck. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, he was permitted to return to Jackson, where he lived with Grandmother Wilson from early 1920 until late 1925. Wright felt stifled by his aunt and his maternal grandmother, who tried to force him to pray that he might find God. He later threatened to leave home because Grandmother Wilson refused to permit him to work on Saturdays, the Adventist Sabbath. Early strife with his aunt and grandmother left him with a permanent, uncompromising hostility toward religious solutions to everyday problems.

At the age of fifteen, Wright penned his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre". It was published in Southern Register, a local black newspaper. In 1923, Wright was made class valedictorian. Determined not to be called an Uncle Tom, he refused to deliver the assistant principal's carefully prepared valedictory address that would not offend the white school officials and finally convinced the black administrators to let him read a compromised version of what he had written. In September of the same year Wright registered for mathematics, English, and history courses at the new Lanier High School in Jackson but had to stop attending classes after a few weeks of irregular attendance because he needed to earn money for family expenses. His childhood in Memphis and Mississippi shaped his lasting impressions of American racism.

Chicago
Wright moved to Chicago in 1927. After finally securing employment as a postal clerk, he read other writers and studied their styles during his time off. When his job at the post office was eliminated by the Great Depression, he was forced to go on relief in 1931. In 1932 he began attending meetings of the John Reed Club. As the club was dominated by the Communist Party, Wright established a relationship with a number of party members. Especially interested in the literary contacts made at the meetings, Wright formally joined the Communist Party in late 1933 and as a revolutionary poet wrote numerous proletarian poems ("I Have Seen Black Hands," "We of the Streets," "Red Leaves of Red Books," for example) for The New Masses and other left-wing periodicals.

A power struggle within the Chicago chapter of the John Reed Club led to the dissolution of the club's leadership; Wright was told he had the support of the club's party members if he was willing to join the party.

By 1935, Wright had completed his first novel, Cesspool, published as Lawd Today (1963), and in January 1936 his story "Big Boy Leaves Home" was accepted for publication in New Caravan. In February, Wright began working with the National Negro Congress, and in April he chaired the South Side Writers' Group, whose membership included Arna Bontemps and Margaret Walker. Wright submitted some of his critical essays and poetry to the group for criticism and read aloud some of his short stories. In 1936, he was also revising "Cesspool".

Through the club, Wright edited Left Front, a magazine that the Communist Party shut down in 1937, despite Wright's repeated protests. Throughout this period, Wright also contributed to the New Masses magazine.

While Wright was at first pleased by positive relations with white Communists in Chicago, he was later humiliated in New York City by some who rescinded an offer to find housing for Wright because of his race. To make matters worse, some black Communists denounced the articulate, polished Wright as a bourgeoisie intellectual, assuming he was well educated and overly assimilated into white society. However, he was largely autodidactic after having been forced to end his public education after the completion of grammar school.

Wright's insistence that young communist writers be given space to cultivate their talents and his working relationship with a black nationalist communist led to a public falling out with the party and the leading African-American communist Buddy Nealson. Wright was threatened at knife point by fellow-traveler coworkers, denounced as a Trotskyite in the street by strikers and physically assaulted by former comrades when he tried to join them during the 1936 May Day march.

In 1937, Richard Wright moved to New York, where he forged new ties with Communist Party members there after getting established. He worked on the WPA Writers’ Project guidebook to the city, New York Panorama (1938), and wrote the book’s essay on Harlem. Wright became the Harlem editor of the Daily Worker. He was happy that during his first year in New York all of his activities involved writing of some kind. In the summer and fall he wrote over two hundred articles for the Daily Worker and helped edit a short-lived literary magazine New Challenge. The year was also a landmark for Wright because he met and developed a friendship with Ralph Ellison that would last for years, and he learned that he would receive the Story magazine first prize of five hundred dollars for his short story "Fire and Cloud."

After Wright received the Story magazine prize in early 1938, he shelved his manuscript of Lawd Today and dismissed his literary agent, John Troustine. He hired Paul Reynolds, the well-known agent of Paul Laurence Dunbar, to represent him. Meanwhile, the Story Press offered Harper all of Wright's prize-entry stories for a book, and Harper agreed to publish them.

Wright gained national attention for the collection of four short stories titled Uncle Tom's Children (1938). He based some stories on lynching in the Deep South. The publication and favorable reception of Uncle Tom's Children improved Wright's status with the Communist party and enabled him to establish a reasonable degree of financial stability. He was appointed to the editorial board of New Masses, and Granville Hicks, prominent literary critic and Communist sympathizer, introduced him at leftist teas in Boston. By May 6, 1938 excellent sales had provided him with enough money to move to Harlem, where he began writing Native Son (1940).

The collection also earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to complete his first novel Native Son (1940). Native Son was selected by the Book of the Month Club as its first book by an African-American author. The lead character, Bigger Thomas, represented limitations that society placed on African Americans. He could only gain his own agency and self-knowledge by committing heinous acts.

Wright was criticized for his works' concentration on violence. In the case of Native Son, people complained that he portrayed a black man in ways that seemed to confirm whites' worst fears. The period following publication of Native Son was a busy time for Wright. In July 1940 he went to Chicago to do research for the text for a folk history of blacks to accompany photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam. While in Chicago he visited the American Negro Exhibition with Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Claude McKay.

He then went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he and Paul Green collaborated on a dramatic version of Native Son. In January 1941 Wright received the prestigious Spingarn Medal for noteworthy achievement by a black. Native Son opened on Broadway, with Orson Welles as director, to generally favorable reviews in March 1941. A volume of photographs almost completely drawn from the files of the Farm Security Administration, with text by Wright, Twelve Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States was published in October 1941 to wide critical acclaim.

Wright's semi-autobiographical Black Boy (1945) described his early life from Roxie through his move to Chicago, his clashes with his Seventh-day Adventist family, his troubles with white employers and social isolation. American Hunger, published posthumously in 1977, was originally intended as the second volume of Black Boy. The Library of America edition restored it to that form.

This book detailed Wright's involvement with the John Reed Clubs and the Communist Party, which he left in 1942. The book implied he left earlier, but his withdrawal was not publicized until 1944. In the volumes' restored form, the diptych structure compared the certainties and intolerance of organized communism, the "bourgeois" books and condemned members, with similar qualities in fundamentalist organized religion. Wright disapproved of the purges in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Wright continued to believe in far-left democratic solutions to political problems.

Paris
Wright moved to Paris in 1946, and became a permanent American expatriate. In Paris, he became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. His Existentialist phase was depicted in his second novel, The Outsider (1953), which described an African-American character's involvement with the Communist Party in New York. In the book considered the first American existential novel, Wright warned that the black man had awakened in a disintegrating society not ready to include him. In 1954 he published a minor novel, Savage Holiday. After becoming a French citizen in 1947, Wright continued to travel through Europe, Asia, and Africa. These experiences were the basis of numerous nonfiction works. One was Black Power (1954), a commentary on the emerging nations of Africa.

In 1949, Wright contributed to the anti-communist anthology The God That Failed; his essay had been published in the Atlantic Monthly three years earlier and was derived from the unpublished portion of Black Boy. He was invited to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which he rejected, correctly suspecting that it had connections with the CIA. The CIA and FBI had Wright under surveillance starting in 1943. Due to McCarthyism, Wright was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s, but he starred as teenager Bigger Thomas (Wright was 42) in an Argentinian film version of Native Son in 1950.

In 1955, Wright visited Indonesia for the Bandung Conference and recorded his observations in The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. Wright was upbeat about the possibilities posed by this meeting between recently oppressed nations.

Other works by Richard Wright included White Man, Listen! (1957); a novel The Long Dream in 1958; as well as a collection of short stories Eight Men, published after his death in 1961. His works primarily dealt with the poverty, anger, and protests of northern and southern urban black Americans.

His agent, Paul Reynolds sent overwhelmingly negative criticism of Wright's four-hundred page "Island of Hallucinations" manuscript in February 1959. Despite that, in March Wright outlined a novel in which Fish was to be liberated from his racial conditioning and become a dominating character. By May 1959, Wright wanted to leave Paris and live in London. He felt French politics had become increasingly submissive to American pressure. The peaceful Parisian atmosphere he had enjoyed had been shattered by quarrels and attacks instigated by enemies of the expatriate black writers.

On June 26, 1959, after a party marking the French publication of White Man, Listen! Wright became ill, victim of a virulent attack of amoebic dysentery probably contracted during his stay on the Gold Coast. By November 1959 his wife had found a London apartment, but Wright's illness and "four hassles in twelve days" with British immigration officials ended his desire to live in England.

On February 19, 1960 Wright learned from Reynolds that the New York premiere of the stage adaptation of The Long Dream received such bad reviews that the adapter, Ketti Frings, had decided to cancel other performances. Meanwhile, Wright was running into additional problems trying to get The Long Dream published in France. These setbacks prevented his finishing revisions of Island of Hallucinations, which he needed to get a commitment from Doubleday.

In June 1960, Wright recorded a series of discussions for French radio dealing primarily with his books and literary career. He also covered the racial situation in the United States and the world, and specifically denounced American policy in Africa. In late September, to cover extra expenses for his daughter Julia's move from London to Paris to attend the Sorbonne, Wright wrote blurbs for record jackets for Nicole Barclay, director of the largest record company in Paris.

In spite of his financial straits, Wright refused to compromise his principles. He declined to participate in a series of programs for Canadian radio because he suspected American control over the programs. For the same reason, Wright rejected an invitation from the Congress for Cultural Freedom to go to India to speak at a conference in memory of Leo Tolstoy. Still interested in literature, Wright helped Kyle Onstott get Mandingo (1957) published in France. His last display of explosive energy occurred on November 8, 1960 in his polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States," delivered to students and members of the American Church in Paris. Wright argued that American society reduced the most militant members of the black community to slaves whenever they wanted to question the racial status quo. He offered as proof the subversive attacks of the Communists against Native Son and the quarrels which James Baldwin and other authors sought with him.

On November 26, 1960 Wright talked enthusiastically about Daddy Goodness with Langston Hughes and gave him the manuscript. Wright contracted Amoebic dysentery on a visit to Africa in 1957, and despite various treatments, his health deteriorated over the next three years. He died in Paris of a heart attack at the age of 52. He was interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery. However, Wright's daughter Julia claimed that her father was murdered.

A number of Wright's works have been published posthumously. Some of Wright's more shocking passages dealing with race, sex, and politics were cut or omitted before original publication. In 1991, unexpurgated versions of Native Son, Black Boy, and his other works were published. In addition, his novella Rite of Passage was published in 1994 for the first time.

In the last years of his life, Richard Wright became enamored with the Japanese poetry form haiku and he wrote over 4,000. In 1998 a book was published ("Haiku: This Other World" ISBN 0-385-72024-6) with 817 haiku which he preferred.

A collection of Wright's travel writings, edited by Virginia Whatley Smith, was published by the Mississippi University Press in 2001. At his death, Wright left an unfinished book, A Father's Law. It dealt with a black policeman and the son he suspected of murder. Wright's daughter Julia Wright published A Father's Law in January 2008. Julia also wished to give his political nonfiction to the public and HarperCollins worked in agreement by issuing an omnibus containing all three works under the title Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen! The omnibus was published in February 2008.

Family
In 1939, he married Dhima Rose Meadman, a modern-dance teacher of Russian Jewish ancestry, but the two separated shortly thereafter. In 1941, he married Ellen Poplar, daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants and a Communist Party organizer in Brooklyn. They had two daughters: Julia in 1942 and Rachel in 1949.

Literary Influences
Wright discusses a number of authors whose works influenced his own in Black Boy, including H.L. Mencken, Gertrude Stein, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and Edgar Lee Masters.

Awards
Richard Wright received several different literary awards during his lifetime including the Spingarn Medal in 1941, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Magazine Award.

Legacy
Wright's stories published during the 1950s disappointed some critics, who said that his move to Europe alienated him from American blacks and separated him from his emotional and psychological roots. Many of Wright’s works failed to satisfy the rigid standards of New Criticism. During the 1950s Wright grew more internationalist in outlook. While he accomplished much as an important public literary and political figure with a worldwide reputation, his very creative work did decline.

Wright's influence was revived in the 1960s. With the growth of the militant black consciousness movement, there came a resurgence of interest in Wright's work. It is generally agreed that Wright's influence in Native Son is not a matter of literary style or technique. His impact, rather, has been on ideas and attitudes, and his work has been a force in the social and intellectual history of the United States in the last half of the twentieth century. "Wright was one of the people who made me conscious of the need to struggle," said writer Amiri Baraka.

During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars published critical essays about Wright in prestigious journals. Richard Wright conferences were held on university campuses from Mississippi to New Jersey. A new film version of Native Son, with a screenplay by Richard Wesley, was released in December 1986. Certain Wright novels became required reading in a number of American universities and colleges.

"Recent critics have called for a reassessment of Wright's later work in view of his philosophical project. Notably, Paul Gilroy has argued that 'the depth of his philosophical interests has been either overlooked or misconceived by the almost exclusively literary enquiries that have dominated analysis of his writing.'" "His most significant contribution, however, was his desire to accurately portray blacks to white readers, thereby destroying the white myth of the patient, humorous, subservient black man." While some of his work was weak and unsuccessful especially that completed within the last three years of his life—his best work will continue to attract readers. His three masterpieces Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, and Black Boy—are a crowning achievement for him and for American literature.

In April, 2009, Wright was featured on a U.S. Postage Stamp. The 61 cent, two ounce rate stamp is the 25th installment of the literary arts series and features a portrait of Richard Wright in front of snow–swept tenements on the South Side of Chicago, a scene that recalls the setting of Native Son.]]> In Quotes http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=5325 Sat, 4 Sep 2010 00:04:00 -1000 New Logan House System Receives Mixed Reviews http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6440
House three office, located in Memorial
Square.
James McDonald/Courier photo


By Beatrice Esteban, Courier Editor-in-Chief

The house system at James Logan High School has been modified, starting the 2010-2011 school year.

Students are assigned to one of three “houses” with two principals each. House one, located next to the Counseling Center and otherwise known as the “purple house”, is overseen by Grace Kim and Francis Rojas. The “green” house, house two, is overseen by Yvonne Hull and Abhi Brar and is next to the Career Center. Meanwhile, the administrators in charge of house three (whose color is orange) are Ramón Camacho and Jessica Lange; the office can be found in Memorial Square, by the Little Theater and the 200’s wing.

As a result of the change in the house system, counseling services for students have also been changed. Students are still assigned a counselor alphabetically, but there are specific counselors for each house as opposed to each grade. House one counselors are Regina Irvin, Jaime Huertas, and Renee Dutra. The counselors for house two are Barbara Alexander, Satinder Samra, and Monica Montes. Meanwhile, house three – which is also responsible for all Puente students – provides counseling from Erika Luna, Leslie Felipe, and Josie Alvite.

Additionally, future Logan students whose siblings attended Logan beginning this school year will be assigned the same house as their sibling.

Although the house system has existed for a long period of time, four houses existed in recent years, separating students by grade. However, Logan’s summer Excel Newsletter stated that they reorganized the house system in order to better get to know students and give them personalized attention.

Meanwhile, the recently built house nine office remains unoccupied.

This new system is accompanied by a variety of reactions from the students that it affects.

“One notable problem I have is that the counselor is considered someone who is supposed to work with and be knowledgeable about their individual students, dealing with them through the high school and college application processes,” said Kelsey Glenn, a junior. “With the sudden shift, students stuck in the middle lose the ability to interact with the same person over the course of their schooldays.


House one office, located by the
Counseling Center.
James McDonald/Courier photo


Senior Harman Behniwal said he agrees: “As far I'm concerned, the planning that I did with my old counselor became a waste.”

However, Eshaan Kashyap, a senior, said he believes that the problem of interaction with counselors is actually solved by the new house system.

“I appreciate the change because it fixes the problem of the old system,” said Kashyap. “The new system intends to keep students with their counselors instead of switching every year. It makes it easier for students to keep in touch with counselors over the course of years. Plus, all the counselors split up the task of college applications, which was originally designated for senior counselors only. With the work split up evenly, there is more time for other students to talk to counselors and receive needed attention.”

There are different reactions about the actual organizations of the new houses as well.

Glenn continued: “I don’t like it in that it’s random,” he said. “They grouped more students in the same house, albeit into more counselors and principals.”

Meanwhile, senior Daisy Ambriz is of a different opinion.

“The house offices seem more organized with their own counselors, secretaries, and – most importantly – house principals. They’re well-distributed,” she said. “And it seems like this year, schedule changes are happening really fast. Students seem satisfied.”

Senior Jasmine Garcia said she seconds the idea that the new house offices are more organized.

“I like it a whole lot better. It’s way more efficient than doing freshmen families and whatnot,” she said. “It also makes it feel like less of a hassle to want to visit your counselor, especially for seniors. If anyone should have a positive relationship with the people in the house offices, it’s the seniors.”


Students gather by house two office,
next to the Career Center.
James McDonald/Courier photo


Diana Mabuyo, a sophomore, said she believes that the administration has good intentions, although more improvements could be made.

“I think it’s more organized and way better – when there were houses 9-12, it seemed more difficult for students, so now that we have three houses near each other, it’ll be easier for both students and parents to find,” she said. “But I wish it wasn’t so busy all the time. Hopefully it’ll change soon, plus it’s the beginning of the year so it’s understandable. Also, I think there should be more workers or student helpers.”

Some students simply want to know the method under which students are separated into their houses.

“I don't understand why there needs to be a new house system,” said junior Sean Zhu. “It's unclear why the administration chose to (seemingly) randomly assign students to houses instead of assigning them by grades. If would be nice if the students are informed of the reason behind the change.”

In the midst of all the changes taking place, junior Jimmy Yin said he just wants to know what is going on.

“They need to make up their minds. All of this change only serves to confuse us, and we’re very easily confused.”]]> News http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6440 Fri, 3 Sep 2010 11:56:00 -1000 Film Clips: Sunshine Cleaning Dramatic But Inspiring http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6436

By Julie Mendoza, Courier Entertainment Editor

This summer I spent two hours of my life watching Sunshine Cleaning. If I must say, it was two hours well spent.

The film is directed by Christine Jeffs, starring Amy Adams (Enchanted) as the struggling single mother having a love affair with a married man. Her life became a downward facing rollercoaster after being head cheerleader in high school.

In an attempt to establish success and independence into her life, Amy’s character Rose Lorkoski takes up a rather odd job. Her sister Norah, played by Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) assists her in cleaning up crime scenes. Minus the corpse they take the responsibility of cleaning up any evidence of the occurring murder or suicide. This unconventional profession provides them with a profound experience. The sisters feel a spiritual connection with their late mother who had tragically committed suicide when they were children.

Despite its dramatic content this movie is clever, creative, and inspiring. If you’re interested in watching it the film is available on demand.]]> Entertainment http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6436 Fri, 3 Sep 2010 09:29:00 -1000 "I have been for some months back determined, if possible, during the remaining part of my life to benefit the people of color." Prudence Crandall http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6437
From wikipedia:
Prudence Crandall (September 3, 1803 - January 28, 1890), a schoolteacher raised as a Quaker, stirred controversy with her education of African-American girls in Canterbury, Connecticut. Her private school, opened in the fall of 1831, was boycotted when she admitted a 17-year-old African-American female student in the autumn of 1833; resulting in what is widely regarded as the first integrated classroom in the United States.

Prudence Crandall was born on September 3, 1803 to Pardon and Esther Carpenter Crandall, a Quaker couple in the Hope Valley area in the town of Hopkinton, Rhode Island. At the age of 17, her father decided to move the family to the small town of Canterbury, Connecticut. She attended the Friends' Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island and later taught in a school for girls in Canterbury. In 1831, she returned to run the newly established Canterbury Female Boarding School, which she purchased with her sister, Almira.


Read more about Prudence Crandall at ConnectKids, the official State of Connecticut website for children.Integration of the boarding school
In the fall of 1832, a young woman by the name of Sarah Harris, the daughter of a free African American farmer in the local community, asked to be accepted to the school in order to prepare for teaching other African Americans. Her father owned a small farm near Canterbury, and Harris even attended the same district school as the white girls who were attending Crandall's school as teenagers. Clearly, the only difference between Harris and the other white pupils was their skin color.

Although she was uncertain of the repercussions that this would cause,[ Crandall eventually allowed Harris to join her school. Following her admission, many prominent townspeople objected and pressured to have Harris dismissed from the school, but Crandall refused. Families of the current students removed their daughters.

Consequently, Crandall ceased teaching white girls altogether and open up her school strictly to African American girls. Crandall temporarily closed the school and began openly recruiting students on March 2, 1833, when William Lloyd Garrison, a supporter of the school, placed advertisements for new pupils in his newspaper The Liberator.[5] Her advertisement announced that on the first Monday of April 1833 she would open a school “for the reception of young ladies and little misses of color, ... Terms, $25 per quarter, one half paid in advance.” In the list of references were the names of Arthur Tappan, Samuel J. May, William Lloyd Garrison, and Arnold Buffum.

As word of the school passed down the Atlantic Seaboard, African American families began sending their daughters from out of state to the school. On April 1, 1833, twenty African-American girls from Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, and surrounding areas in Connecticut arrived at Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Misses of Color.

The new school
With the school now open, Crandall was teaching a variety of subjects including reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, history, natural and moral philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, drawing and painting, music and the piano, and even the French language. The students were required to pay $25 per quarter, paying half of that sum in advance. This money covered tuition, board, and washing, while books and stationery were purchased and provided to the girls at a discounted price. Crandall's excitement and sense of accomplishment at running a school to help young black women was short-lived because of the immediate ostracism and criticism she faced from her community, and even the state.

Public backlash
Citizens of Canterbury at first protested the school and then held town meetings "to devise and adopt such measures as would effectually avert the nuisance, or speedily abate it..." Unable to shake Ms. Crandall's spirit, the town response escalated into warnings, threats,and acts of violence against the school. Crandall was faced with great local opposition and they had no plans to back down.

On May 24, 1833 the Connecticut Legislature passed "The Black Law" prohibiting such a school with African American students from outside the state without the town's permission. In July, Crandall was arrested and placed in the county jail for one night and then released under bond to await her trials.

Under Black Law, the townspeople refused any amenities to the students or Crandall, closing their shops and meeting houses to them. Stage drivers also refused to provide them with transportation and even the town doctors would not attend to their needs. To make matters worse, the townspeople also poisoned the school's well—its only water source—with animal feces and then prevented Crandall from obtaining any water from other sources. It was difficult for Crandall to run her school when she had no resources to keep it standing. But she continued to teach the young women angering the community even further.

Crandall's students also suffered from the injustices of their environment. One 17-year-old student, Anna Eliza Hammond, was even arrested at one point; however, with the help of New York abolitionist Samuel May, she was able to post bail bonds with through collections and donations of $10,000.

In response to a local reverend's support of Crandall, lauded Connecticut politician Andrew T. Judson, stated that,"...we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our state. The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country."

Judicial proceedings
At word of Crandall's trials, a prominent abolitionist, Arthur Tappan of New York, donated $10,000 to hire the ablest lawyers to defend Crandall throughout her trials, the first of which opened at the Windham County Court on August 23, 1833. Constitutionality of the Connecticut law regarding the education of African Americans was the driving force of the cases.

The defense argued that African Americans were citizens in other states, so therefore there was no reason why they should not be considered as such in Connecticut. Thus, they focused on the deprivation of their rights under the United States Constitution. In contrast, the prosecution denied the fact that freed African-Americans were citizens in any state, and the county court jury ultimately failed to reach a decision for the cases.

Although a second trial in Superior Court decided against the school, the case was taken to the Supreme Court of Errors on appeal in July of 1834. At the conclusion of this appeal, the Supreme Court of Connecticut reversed the decision of the lower court, dismissing the case on July 22 on the grounds of a lack of evidence.

The judicial process had not stopped the operation of the Canterbury school, but the townspeople's violence against it increased. The windows were smashed with heavy iron bars as the vandalism continued. The public was so angry at the dismissal of the case that on September 9, the school was set on fire. For the safety of her students, her family and her self, Prudence Crandall decided to close her school on September 10, 1834.

Later years
In August of the same year the school closed, Prudence Crandall married the Rev. Calvin Phileo. Mr. and Mrs. Philleo moved out of state to Massachusetts, then lived in New York, Rhode Island, and finally Illinois, where Calvin Phileo died. Following the death of her husband, Prudence Crandall Philleo relocated to Kansas.

Connecticut repealed the Black Law in 1838, and later recognized Prudence Crandall with an act of the state legislature, prominently supported by Mark Twain, providing her with a $400 yearly pension in 1886 (about $9,500 in 2009 dollars)
Legacy

Crandall's school still stands in Canterbury, Connecticut, and currently serves as the Prudence Crandall museum, run by the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. The Prudence Crandall House in Canterbury, Connecticut, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991.

In Enfield, Connecticut, an elementary school of Enfield Public Schools carries the namesake Prudence Crandall Elementary School.

In 1995, the Connecticut General Assembly designated Prudence Crandall as the state's official heroine.]]> In Quotes http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6437 Fri, 3 Sep 2010 00:15:00 -1000 Listen Up: Seinfeld Gets Hip http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6435

By Farah Habad, Courier Music Editor

Wale Folarin, a prominent rapper under Jay-Z's label Roc Nation, released yet another mixtape with a Jerry Seinfeld theme. Entitled “More About Nothing” he brings about a new, distinct style to his work.

Twenty one original songs, many of which have sampled beats, defy the new wave of music played on hip hop radio stations. With no autotune and no cliché rhymes, he reinstills realness into his music.

There is also a buffet of collaborations on the mixtape. From Wiz Khalifa and Wacka Flocka Flame to Melanie Fiona and NBA star Kevin Durant, Wale shows his versatility by teaming up with a variety of artists. In the song “The Black and Gold” he takes a techno beat - something that you would never ever see a rap song based off of - and flips it into a club banger.

On another token, the song “The Eye of the Tiger” begins with the voicemails Tiger Woods allegedly left on a woman’s phone, making a song about infidelity. Wale shows that hip hop doesn’t always need a beat. And in the track “The Ambitious Girl” he puts a piece of slam poetry on his mixtape.

It’s an instant classic that shouldn’t be looked over. “More About Nothing” gets 10 stars in my book.]]> Entertainment http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=6435 Thu, 2 Sep 2010 09:33:50 -1000