4:44 The Post-Script

THE POST-SCRIPT

From the Lemonade Syllabus to the 4:44 Post-Script

A resource guide on Black Masculinity for a millennial generation

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 3 Autobiographies & Memoirs 10 Fiction, Literature 11 Collected Works, Essays & Other Writings 12 Biographies & Non-Fiction 14 For the Culture – Writings on Black Popular Culture 16 Black Feminists on Black Masculinity 17 Children, Youth & Young Adult 18 Poetry 19 Music 20 Speeches & Sermons 21 Film and Documentaries & Other Works of Art 22 #BlackBoyJoy 23 Acknowledgements 24 About the Curator 25

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INTRODUCTION It’s been close to four years since I have been engaged in social media conversations around black men and black women. Much of what I’ve discussed throughout the years has boiled down to the age old “Black women vs. Black men” debates that usually flare up over the ever popular and never-ceasing topic of relationships.

Over this time, I’ve read numerous essays, thinkpieces, Twitter threads, Facebook statuses and watched countless Vines and YouTube videos on this; I’ve even watched a few of these people capitalize on their garrulous gift and enter the publishing world. That is to say, black millennials are interested in creating space to discuss the tougher issues of the mind and of the heart.

In 2016, when Beyoncé released her latest critically acclaimed studio visual album entitled Lemonade. To say that it was a hit is an understatement. The ways that the visual album impacted black culture and specifically black women has probably yet to be told fully. It was a masterful display of black womanhood in its totality. Combined with the visuals, the lyrics and the interspersed poetry from Warsan Shire, it generated and untold amount of chatter on social media. And Black Twitter was right there in the center. The hashtag #LemonadeSyllabus was created and writer and educator Candice Benbow curated a resource for black women to engage in the black feminist and womanist themes at play in the visual album. Part of the critical success of Beyonce’s Lemonade is tied to how it tapped directly into the angst-filled rift between black women and black men when it comes to relationships of all kinds. In many ways, it provided a visual language for the depth and breadth of emotions that black women have

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and continue to experience. Multiple black women I spoke to said they watched the visual album more than once and were moved to tears each time.

Fast-forwarding to 2017, Jay-Z released his latest album entitled 4:44. Available exclusively on his own music streaming service, Tidal, early on it was only being heard and digested by a select few who had a subscription. Personally, I had no intentions of paying for a second streaming music service. Within a week of its debut, the album had been released fully and I was able to digest it.

In the time between the original release and when the album was distributed to other streaming platforms, everyone had zeroed in on the eponymous track “4:44” where Jay-Z, seemingly, acknowledged the ways in which he wasn’t loyal to Beyoncé and the ways in which he mistreated her. Dozens of think-pieces were written around what this meant for our collective and cultural image of the First Family of Hip Hop. For starters, the track supposedly gave context to the security footage of Solange whaling on Jay-Z in an elevator in 2014. With most of the commentary produced authored by black women, I was bold enough to post one of those think-pieces on my Facebook page where I disagreed with the narrative the author created.

As the comments began piling up on my Facebook page, I realized that even in an album that was touted as the black male version of Lemonade, that black male voices were slow to speak in public in a way that displayed authentic feelings and emotions around black masculinity.

Namely, most of the black men I knew intentionally chose not to be emotionally vulnerable on social media.

It was from that point—the text messages and phone calls I received all relating to that post— that I got nudged by friends and colleagues alike

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that there needed to be a thoughtful response to 4:44 originated by black men in the way that the Lemonade Syllabus functioned for black women. I agreed, but I didn’t want to put my name on it.

The month of July passed, and Black Twitter had moved on; more pressing things like whether or not the U.S. Senate would pass a ‘repeal and replace’ bill to Obamacare, the escalation of tensions with North Korea, Colin Kaepernick and a potential boycott of the National Football League began to take precedent. Even Charlottesville. We had effectively moved on from 4:44.

On the Saturday night before the first Sunday in August, I got a phone call from one of my friends and colleagues telling me that he was starting a sermon series at his church on 4:44.

Previously he had done a sermon series at his church on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, and last year I preached a sermon at his church “The Gospel According to Chance the Rapper.” As we were talking, he asked me very pointedly that he needed some resources, particularly books, to have some conversations about black men in his congregation. To put a fine point on it, he was aware of the ways in which black men needed to have some safe spaces of our own to discuss what does it mean to be black and to be a man in this country.

***** My hope is that between the books, the films and the other resources listed, that black men and women alike will be able to expand their solipsistic concept of black masculinity and black manhood. While many of the resources listed do not deal with ideas around black masculinity directly, the list favors black male authors and the subject matter of the black male American experience. I believe reading about

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Lawrence Otis Graham’s experience going from being a high-paid New York lawyer to being a busboy in a posh New England country club to watching Clay Cane’s documentary “Holla If You Hear Me: Being Black and Gay in the Church” can have the effect of shifting our cultural norms and understandings around black male identity. We, as black men, need to come to the understanding that our black masculinity is complicated and complex.

In the days following the release of 4:44, Jay-Z released documentary-styled footage of him and other well-known black celebrities sitting around having a conversation, a kind of “footnotes” to the specific “4:44” track. They open up discussing the intricate emotions around the relationships with older men and the “invisible wisdom” they dispensed—Jay-Z speaks of his father’s absence and Will Smith speaks of the putrid advice he received from an old head.

I want to take a cue from Jay-Z’s “Footnote for 4:44” and invite the black men who will use this “Post-Script” as a resource guide to organize the other men at your barbershop around Ta-Nehesi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”; for the college student who wants to do some extra reading on the subject of black bodies and masculinity to Google Steven Thrasher’s “A Black Body on Trial”; for the black man in a relationship looking for new ways to think about love will pick up a book by bell hooks.

This resource guide is also for the Sunday School teacher who is searching to get a pulse for the millennials and the ones coming behind us, he or she can reference this list and they might actually go listen to Chance the Rapper.

Hopefully this list is accessible to a wide-ranging group of people; to the academics as well as your cousin Pookie who don’t read much. Hence the films and documentaries. As I was telling my friend on the phone that Saturday night, most

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of the immediate resources that came to mind were academic non-fiction readings; something inaccessible to a young black man who’s in college and is a biology major, and just as inaccessible to a middle-aged blue-collar worker who never went to college.

My desire is that black men across this country will seek out ways of healing and wholeness and a better understanding of their place in society.

And if this resource guide can help that process, then mission accomplished.

Traveling throughout this country and talking to black men in my family, friends down through the years as well as colleagues nationwide, its painfully clear that for so many of us black men, we don’t possess the language of self-liberation.

Or at least not one that feels familiar. Far too often men in Western society, and thereby black men, fall into the trap of “women are emotional” with the clear implication that men aren’t.

To shed the vestiges of toxic masculinity given to us courtesy of Western culture, our healing and wholeness as black men will undoubtedly be unconventional and messy. There is true work in having to dismantle and disavow the parts of masculinity that are toxic and deadly. In other words, we will have to encounter our shadows and “get in touch with our emotions ‘n shit.” It is in this darkness where our language of self-liberation will be shaped and molded. We can’t be present for our spouses and partners and our children if our emotional intelligence never progressed passed the age of three when someone told us “Man up. Boys don’t cry.”

These books, films, documentaries, music and poetry and other works listed here are meant to give black men language to discuss the intricacies of our existence so that when we cry and say “Black Lives Matter” that we are aware to

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include ourselves as well. As black men, our minds need to be liberated so that we can participate in the freeing of ourselves, both individually and collectively.

This is not an exhaustive list. But it’s a starting point. And we’ve got to start somewhere.

Live, and be well.

Be encouraged.

Remain truthfully radical.

Always uppity, Joshua L. Lazard

Durham, North Carolina, August 2017

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You can find me in the following places: Twitter – @theuppitynegro Instagram – @j.lawrence.photos and @theuppitynegro Personal blog – www.uppitynegronetwork.com I can be contacted by email as well: joshua dot lazard at gmail dot com

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AUTOBIOGRAPHIES & MEMOIRS

Arthur Ashe

Days of Grace John Amechi

Man in the Middle Charles M. Blow

Fire Shut Up in My Bones Ben Carson

Gifted Hands Eldridge Cleaver

Soul on Ice Miles Davis

Miles, the Autobiography Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt

The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect with Their Fathers Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass John Hope Franklin

Mirror to America, an autobiography E. Lynn Harris

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted Michael Jackson

Moonwalk Mark Mathabane

Kaffir Boy

James McBride

The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother Nathan McCall

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America Shaquille O’Neal

Shaq UnCut: My Story Barack Obama

The Audacity of Hope Dreams from my Father Samuel DeWitt Proctor

The Substance of Things Hoped For Dennis Rodman

Bad As I Wanna Be Marcus Samuelsson

Yes, Chef, a memoir Booker T. Washington

Up From Slavery Trevor Noah

Born a Curse Cornel West

Brother West Thomas Chatterton Williams

Losing My Cool: Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd Malcolm X, with Alex Haley

The Autobiography of Malcolm X Andrew Young

An Easy Burden

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FICTION, LITERATURE

James Baldwin

Go Tell it on the Mountain Daniel Black

They Tell Me of a Home Perfect Peace Paul Beatty

The Sellout The White Boy Shuffle Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man Percival Everett

Erasure I Am Not Sidney Poitier Ernest J. Gaines

A Lesson Before Dying A Gathering of Old Men In My Father’s House Sam Greenlee

The Spook Who Sat by the Door E. Lynn Harris

Invisible Life Just As I Am Basketball Jones James Weldon Johnson

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man T. Geronimo Johnson

Hold It Till It Hurts Randal Kenan

A Visitation of Spirits

Kiese Laymon

Long Division Victor LaValle

The Ballad of Black Tom Brandon Massey

Dark Corner Thunderland James McBride

Miracle at St. Anna Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin

Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel The selected works of novelist Walter Moseley from the Easy Rawlins mystery series

Devil in a Blue Dress A Little Yellow Dog George S. Schuyler

Black No More Sister Souljah

The Coldest Winter Ever Midnight Colson Whitehead

John Henry Days Sag Harbor Richard Wright

Native Son Black Boy Uncle Tom’s Children The Outsider John A. Williams

Clifford’s Blues

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COLLECTED WORKS, ESSAYS & OTHER WRTINGS

Sam Anderson

“The Misunderstood Genius of Russell Westbrook,” The New York Times, 2017 Rembert Browne

“Barack and Me,” Grantland, 2015 “My 17-Year-Old Self on David Brooks on Colin Kaepernick,” New York Magazine, 2016 “The Brand Keeping Oprah in Business, Tyler Perry,” New York Magazine, 2016 Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)

Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to PanAfricanism Ta-Nehesi Coates

“The Case for Considering Reparations.”

The Atlantic Magazine, 2014 “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” The Atlantic Magazine, 2015 “My President Was Black,” The Atlantic Magazine, 2016 Michael Eric Dyson

“The Courage of Colin Kaepernick,” The Undefeated, 2016 Lawrence Otis Graham

“Invisible Man,” New York Magazine, 1992

George Jackson

Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson Joshua L. Lazard

“Transcending America: How Russell Westbrook, Odell Beckham, Jr. and Cam Newton Have Change Black Masculinity,” personal blog, 2016 Dwight McBride

Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality The Collected Works of visual artist Aaron McGruder

A Right to be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury, Public Enemy No. 2: An All-New Boondocks Collection, Boondocks: Because I Know You Don’t Read the Newspaper, Fresh for ’01… You Suckas: A Boondocks Collection, “Boondocks,” television series on the Black Entertainment Television Network Frederick McKindra

“Does Desiring White Guys Make Me a Traitor to My Race?” Buzzfeed, 2017 Ismail Muhammad

“Frank Ocean and the Black Male Body,” The Millions, 2016 Wesley Morris

“Last Taboo: Why Pop Culture Just Can’t Deal With Black Male Sexuality,” New York Times Magazine, 2016

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Collected Works, Essays & Other Writings cont.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

“The Worth of Black Men, From Slavery to Ferguson,” The New York Times Magazine, 2014 The Collected Writings of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin

I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin Brent Staples

“Black Men in Public Spaces.” Harper’s Monthly, 1986 Steven Thrasher

“A Black Body on Trial: The Conviction of HIV-Positive ‘Tiger Mandingo,’” Buzzfeed, 2015 Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

What Makes You So Strong? Sermons of Strength and Joy Malcolm X

The Portable Malcolm X Reader

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BIOGRAPHIES & NON FICTION

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?

Na’im Akbar

Visions for Black Men Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery Know Thyself Murali Balaji

The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson Derrick Bell

Faces at the Bottom of the Well Devon Carbado, editor

Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality Stanley Crouch

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charley Parker Tommy Curry

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood John D’Emilio

Lost Prophet: Life and Times of Bayard Rustin Nadia Ellis

Territories of the Soul: Queering Belonging in the Black Diaspora Frantz Fanon

Black Skin, White Masks The Wretched of the Earth

Marshall Frady

Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson Zack O’Malley Greenburg

Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office Randal Maurice Jelks

Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of a Movement Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Gardner Hines

Black Titan: A. G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire E. Patrick Johnson

Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, an oral history No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Queer Black Studies Peniel E. Joseph

Stokely, a Life David Levering Lewis

W. E. B. DuBois, a Biography Manning Marable

Malcolm X, a Life of Reinvention Mark Anthony Neal

New Black Man Looking for Leroy: Illegitimate Black Masculinities

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Biographies & Non-Fiction cont.

Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison, a biography Jackie Robinson, a biography The Life of Langston Hughes Nick Salvatore

Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church and the Transformation of America Rashad Shabazz

Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago Martin Summers

Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middleclass & the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900—1930 Michael Uebel

Race and the Subject of Masculinities Maurice O. Wallace

Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775—1995 Jennifer Jenson Wallach

Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen Gafio Watts

Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual Vincent Woodard

The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within Slave Culture Onaje X. O. Woodbine

Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop and Street Basketball Carter G. Woodson

The Miseducation of the Negro

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FOR THE CULTURE writings on black pop culture

Michelle Alexander

Hill Harper

The New Jim Crow M. K. Asante, Jr.

It’s Bigger than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation

Letters to a Young Brother Jay-Z

Decoded Randall Kennedy

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

Michael Baisden

Men Cry in the Dark James Baldwin

Lezley McSpadden

Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy and Love of My Son Michael Brown

The Fire Next Time Keith Boykin

For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not William C. Rhoden Enough (ed.)

Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial Athlete in Black America Lawrence Ross One More River to Cross: Black & Gay in Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of America Race on America’s Campuses Ta-Nehesi Coates Scott Poulson-Bryant Between the World and Me Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, a Black Men in America comic book Michael Eric Dyson

Why I Love Black Women Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur Steve Estes

I Am a Man! Race, Manhood and the Civil Rights Movement Sybrina Fulton

Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man

Mychal Denzel Smith

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education Melissa Stein

Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of Masculinity, 1830—1934 Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy Touré

Who’s Afraid of Postblackness? What It Means to be Black Now

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BLACK FEMINISM ON BLACK MASCULINITY

Simone Brown

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness bell hooks

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love Salvation: Black People and Love Joan Morgan

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost Michelle Wallace, with foreword by Jamilah Lemieux

Black Macho and the Myth of the Super Woman Jesmyn Ward

Men We Reaped

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CHILDREN, YOUTH & YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart Bruce Brooks

The Moves Make the Man Alice Childress

A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich Sharon G. Flake

Who Am I Without Him? Lorraine Hansberry

Raisin in the Sun Tameka Bradley Hobbs

Junebug and the Gumbo Garden Julius Lester

Uncle Remus, the Complete Tales John Henry Walter Dean Myers

Monster Fallen Angels Slam!

The Mouse Rap Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

All American Boys Miles Morales: Spider-Man, Marvel

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POETRY

Amiri Baraka, also known as LeRoi Jones

Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing The Dead Lecturer S. O. S. Somebody Blew Up America and Other Poems The Collected Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar Langston Hughes

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes The Weary Blues Joshua Bennett

The Sobbing School Claude McKay

“If We Must Die,” The Liberator, 1919 Clint Smith

Counting Descent Tupac

The Rose that Grew From the Concrete Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

The Crown Ain’t Worth Much Philip B. Williams

Bruised Gospels

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MUSIC

Chance the Rapper

From the album, Acid Rap, 2013.

“Coco Butter Kisses.”

From the album Surf w/Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, 2015.

“Sunday Candy” From the mixtape, The Coloring Book, 2016.

“All We Got.” “Blessings.”

“How Great.”

“Finish Line / Drown.”

Childish Gambino

From the album, Awaken, My Love! 2016.

“Redbone.”

D’Angelo & the Vanguard

Black Messiah, 2014.

Marvin Gaye

From the album What’s Going On, 1971.

“What’s Going On.” “Trouble Man.” “Mercy Mercy Me.” “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler).”

Frank Ocean

From the album, Channel Orange, 2012.

“Super Rich Kids.”

“Bad Religion.”

“Forrest Gump John Legend

with The Roots, Wake Up! 2010. with Common, “Glory” from the film Selma, 2014.

J. Cole

2014 Forest Hills Drive, 2014.

4 Your Eyez Only, 2016.

Kendrick Lamar

From the album Good Kid, M. A. A. D. City.

“Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” 2012.

To Pimp a Butterfly, 2015.

Damn, 2017.

Sam Cooke

“A Change Gonna Come,” 1964.

Vic Mensa

From the extended play There’s a A Lot Going On, 2016.

“16 Shots.”

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SPEECHES & SERMONS

Frederick Douglass

“What the Black Man Wants,” speech. 1865 Louis Farrakhan

Address at the Million Man March, speech. 1995 Otis Moss, III

“The Gospel According to the Wiz: The Miseducation of the Scarecrow,” sermon. 2010 Barack Obama

Morehouse College commencement address, speech. 2013 Henry McNeal Turner

“God is a Negro,” sermon. 1895 “I Claim the Rights of a Man,” speech. 1868 Jesse Williams

Acceptance of BET Humanitarian Award, speech. 2016 Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

“What Makes You So Strong Black Man?” sermon. 1993 Malcolm X

“The Ballot or the Bullet,” speech. 1964

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The Collected Works of photographer and fine artist Joshua Rashaad McFadden

After Selma Selfhood Come to Selfhood The Best Man Film, 1997

Boyz In The Hood Film, 1995

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin Documentary, 2003

Cidade de Deus Film, 2002 Cooley High Film, 1975

Dear White People Film, 2015 Television, 2017

Dope Film, 2016

Fences Film, 2016 The Collected Works of playwright August Wilson

Fences, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson Fruitvale Station Film, 2015

Get Out Film, 2017

Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks Documentary, 2000

FILM, DOCUMENTARIES & OTHER WORKS OF ART Menace II Society Film, 1993

Moonlight Film, 2016

The New Edition Story Film, 2017

New Jack City Film, 1991 The Collected Works of filmmaker Spike Lee

School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Bamboozled

Holla If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church Documentary, 2015

I Am a Man Documentary, 1997

Inkwell Film, 1994

The Kalief Browder Story Documentary, 2017

The Learning Tree Film, 1969

Love Jones Film, 1997

Shaft Film, 1971

Sing Your Song, Harry Belafonte Documentary, 2011

Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen Documentary, 2008

Tales From The Hood Film, 1995

Tupac Resurrection Documentary, 2003

Whose Streets?

Documentary, 2017

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#BLACKBOYJOY The following are five black men who have intentionally carved out a space to showcase the cultural riches of black millennials with an emphasis on embodying #BlackBoyJoy. They cover the range of politics to the arts as well as travel and education and mental health awareness.

Elliott Ashby, 34, based out of Harlem, New York, Elliott is a freelance video producer and photographer. His Eye of Elliott web series speaks to his creative drive as he’s producing content that’s encouraging and uplifting for the culture. www.elliottashby.com

Edward Buckles, 24, is a native of New Orleans who, while in college, began hosting House of Young—a place for the woke, gifted and black to celebrate the talents of each other. He is a photographer and videographer making moves to produce “Katrina Babies” a feature-length documentary about the ones who were kids when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Instagram: @e.buckles Twitter: @e_buckles

Dirrick Butler, 26, is living in Chicago where he has created We The People, a digital place to “highlight the amazing work that millennials are doing across the nation.”

One of his most recent interviews includes that of Hon. Jewell Jones, the youngest person ever elected to the Michigan State House. www.behopefulpeople.com

Alex Hardy, 32, is a writer and mental health advocate living in Manhattan. His sarcasm and genius wit comes forth in his writing that you can see archived at Very Smart Brothers. He also hosts writing and mental health workshops across the country and is a host of the podcast The Extraordinary Negroes. www.coloredboy.com

Darnell Lamont Walker, 36, based out of, well, that’s kind of the whole point: he recently started Passport Required designed primarily for those who are black and want to travel the world. Darnell is an author, photographer and videographer. He recently produced Seeking Asylum a documentary in response to the killings of unarmed black men at the hands of police. www.passportrequired.com

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to acknowledge Billy Michael Honor and Dominique Robinson who politely cussed me out when I balked at doing this project, but for which I’m thankful for the push. To Daniel Corrie Shull, the pastor who asked the right question, at the right time, letting me know that there was a need for this in at least one corner of Black life. For The Bretheren of Faith—Ray Freeman, Christopher Jones, William Mebane, III, Willie Nelson, III and Earnest Salsberry and also to the Howard Crew—John C. Meade, Kellee Halford and Lee Hill who have helped me maintain my righteous Black mind on more than one occasion when I was convinced the world was going to end.

To the ITC who introduced me to the one and only Terel A. J. McBride who keeps me reminded that it was amongst us that the original “Be Encouraged Tour” was started; for Robert Michael Thomas being a silent voice of positive encouragement in recent years. And I can’t forget the one who will always be “roommate from Union,” Wesley Morris.

Also, to the Duke Divinity crew that talked me through these processes in and around black masculinity, especially Amber Burgin and Jasolyn Harris. As well as Walter Kimbrough who thought it not robbery to respond promptly to my email as I was curating content for this.

To my people in Chicago that contributed to this: Patience Rayford, Stephanie Hicks, Jihan Murray-Smith, Christopher M. Brown and Jamila Lyons; and friends that act like family.

To my extended and close family—from Chicago to Mississippi to Louisiana and Texas.

And to my parents, Dubra and Lawrence.

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ABOUT ME I consider myself to be a black millennial public intellectual. I’m a writer, an ordained minister, religious consultant, musician—I play the organ and keyboard for my church—as well as a photographer. You can also find my writing at Religion Dispatches, an online independent and non-profit magazine discussing the intersection of religion and American culture and my personal blog, The Uppity Negro Network.

Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, in the Kenwood neighborhood. (I always like to say Barack Obama moved in after my parents were already living there.)

And I’m currently living in Durham, North Carolina.

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“A Black man is good enough.”

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