• Radio Journalist's Ear To, And Voice Of, A People, by Todd S. Burroughs
• The WWII Tank Battalion That Fought Despite Itself, by Todd S. Burroughs
• Tupac Resurrection by Reviewed by Graffik
• An Extraordinarily Detailed Account Of 1990s Black America, by Todd S. Burroughs
• Mumia Abu-Jamal's Continuing Resistance, by Todd S. Burroughs

Radio Journalist's Ear To, And Voice Of, A People

The Agronomist.
Directed By Jonathan Demme.
THINKFilm and HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films.
A Clinica Estetico production.

Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs

Radio, when used correctly, can get you killed.

It's the most powerful, most personal medium. Nothing else on planet Earth can reach more oppressed people-the poorest, the illiterate and semi-illiterate-with the same information at one time. It explains and reflects issues, events, and people. It provides company as well as context. At its best, its mixture and manipulation of supplied sound nourishes the spirit and offers hope for a better tomorrow and, perhaps, even eventual liberation.

So Jean Leopold Dominique, a member of Haiti's light-skinned mulatto elite, was tuned in to this power. He purchased a radio station. In the 1970s, he turned himself onto the potential of expanding democracy through a free medium. ("Radio, then," says Dominique, "was not a news medium. It was entertainment.") He found freedom through his frequency. He committed class suicide using his (broadcast) voice to rally for peasant power. His reward: a violent death after being twice exiled from his homeland.   CLICK HERE TO READ!>>

The WWII Tank Battalion That Fought Despite Itself

Brothers In Arms: The Epic Story Of The 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes.
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton.
Read by Peter Francis James, with an introduction by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Random House Audio. 
Five Hours (abridged) on four CDs.

Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs

Say the name George Patton, and the average American mind immediately recreates a scene or two from the 1969 Hollywood classic starring George C. Scott. But the members of the 761st Tank Battalion not only knew Patton, but also served under the great World War II general.

Those tanks at the snowy, freezing climax of the film, fighting in the Battle of The Bulge? "That was us," one of the battalion's members said in the interview portion of the audiobook "Brothers In Arms: The Epic Story Of The 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes."

But Hollywood painted the all-Black unit white. The most prominent African-American in "Patton" was the soldier-manservant who drew his bath.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (yep, that one) and writer Anthony Walton, a Bowdoin College professor, re-create in great detail the story of the first Black WWII combat unit to fight side by side with white soldiers. Actor Peter Francis James provides crisp narration to an important chapter of American history told with new (read: Black) eyes and ears.   CLICK HERE TO READ!>>

"Injustice," U.K. Film Exposes Pan-African Reality Reviewed By Jared Ball 

A narrow view of the world inhibits our abilities to recognize patterns. If our view stops at our block, city or even country, we miss essential clues that might expose our actual condition. 

The film Injustice implicitly makes this point. The 98-minute film highlights ongoing police brutality against the United Kingdom's Black population. Between 1969 and 1999, more than 1,000 Black people in England died while in police custody. Never has that society held an officer legally accountable.  CLICK HERE TO READ! >>

Tupac Resurrection Reviewed by Graffik

It seems that the labels and corporations that employ various rappers are continually searching for new methods of marketing their product to the masses. In the beginning, there was Run DMC and their Adidas. Fast forward to today and Jay-Z and 50 Cent both have sneaker deals with Reebok, Nelly has his own soft drink and P-Diddy has his own television vehicle through which he can “push” his new group Da Band.

Following this trend, Tupac Resurrection would seem a likely evolution. What better way for all the companies with a hand in Afeni Shakur’s pocket to reanimate the fallen soldier and at the same time reanimate sales on everything Tupac? To this end, the film does an amazing job. Hearing Pac’s voice and seeing footage of him while he was living would most likely be enough to inspire a large boom in salves, but what really is effective in influencing the audience to buy, buy, buy, is the music.  CLICK HERE TO READ!>>

The Best Of Emerge Magazine.
By George E. Curry (Editor).
One World/Ballantine.
667 pages. $19.95.

Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs

Todd Burroughs

The nation's premiere Black mainstream journalists-those Black Baby Boomers who fought to desegregate the nation's elite newsrooms in the late 1960s, making their white metropolitan newspapers and national magazines correctly cover the peak and eventual decline of the Black Power Movement in the 1970s and the anti-apartheid movement and Jesse Jackson's two presidential campaigns of the 1980s-had so many important national stories to tell, from their own Black perspectives, using Black reference points. But because there was no Black equivalent of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News And World Report and Mother Jones, there was no consistent, hard-hitting, national, elite public space for telling such stories on Black terms. From October 1989 to June 2000, Emerge magazine-the monthly periodical that will be forever known for its cover portrayals of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas first as a handkerchief-head and, later, a lawn jockey-fulfilled that need for its approximately 200,000 readers.  CLICK HERE TO READ!>>

Mumia Abu-Jamal's Continuing Resistance-This Time, In The Black Spiritual Realm

Faith Of Our Fathers: An Examination Of The Spiritual Life of African And African-American People.
By Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Africa World Press.
180 pages. $19.95.

Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs

 

Todd Burroughs

Faith is extremely important to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death row inmate in Waynesburg, Pa. As a teenager, it was his faith in a people's resistance that made the Philadelphia resident, who was born with the name Wesley Cook, put down his beloved Spider-Man comicbooks and pick up the literature of the Black Panther Party. Abu-Jamal became a member of the BPP's Philadelphia branch. It was his faith in education that led him to Goddard College, then to the radio as a Philadelphia newscaster and news reporter. It was his faith in the teachings of the MOVE Organization that led him to become a supporter. It was his faith in family that caused him to charge into the justice system when his brother, William Cook, was being beaten by a white Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Shots were fired. Both Abu-Jamal and Faulkner were hit. Faulkner died. Abu-Jamal was convicted of Faulkner's murder in 1982. But the former Black Panther has never lost faith while writing letters and Op-Ed pieces, recording radio commentaries and commencement addresses, and compiling his three anthologies of his work that he will one day receive a new trial.  CLICK HERE TO READ!>>