JAMES BALDWIN

When an author dies, their legacy can be left entirely in the hands of their estate.

From an imprisoned Ukranian journalist to a high school activist in Florida, PEN America paid tribute Monday night to democracy and free expression and warned about the dangers faced in the U.S. and abroad.

While arguing against intolerance, Azar Nafisi draws parallels between literary dystopias and contemporary America.

Cook County has offered few details so far on how the cash assistance will operate.

The poet, activist and educator Sonia Sanchez is this year’s winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, a lifetime achievement honor started in 1960 and previously given to Robert Frost, Toni Morrison and Stephen Sondheim among others.

Sidney Poitier made history — on the screen and off.

An anthology of the late Norman Mailer’s writing that Random House allegedly had scheduled for his centennial in 2023, but backed off from, will be released by a publisher that has taken on such discarded works as Woody Allen’s memoir “Apropos of Nothing” and a Philip Roth biography written by Blake Bailey.

France has inducted U.S.-born entertainer, anti-Nazi spy and civil rights activist Josephine Baker into the Pantheon.

A Black woman will, for the first time, join other luminaries interred in France’s Pantheon.

A series of myths keep white America from owning up about race, bias and ourselves.

Sandra Cisneros feels like she’s finally replied to a long overdue letter with her new book, “Martita, I Remember You.”.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an NBA legend, but the man known for his trademark skyhook shot has also devoted his life advocating for equality and social justice.

AP Photo/Tony CameranoThe opening story in The Autobiography of Malcolm X tells of Malcolm’s mother, Louise Little, facing down Ku Klux Klansmen who rode up to her house in Omaha, Nebraska, shouting for her husband to come out. Little, who was pregnant with Malcolm at the time, opened the door and told them her husband was away and she was alone with her three small children.Anna Mailaika Tubbs also recounts this story in her book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, as an example of how Little, like her ancestors in Grenada, stood up to white oppressors.A follower of Marcus Garvey, Little influenced who her son became, teaching him and his siblings about current affairs and “Garveyite principles of self-determination, self-reliance, discipline, and organization,” Tubbs writes in the book.Exceptional men like Malcolm X didn’t spring up from nothing, and in her book, Tubbs makes the case for how Little, Alberta King, and Berdis Baldwin raised their sons to become extraordinary leaders. She tells the personal histories of these women—Little came from Grenada and followed her uncle to Montreal to work for the Marcus Garvey movement; King grew up in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, which her parents led (and where newly elected Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is now senior pastor); and Baldwin, originally from an island off of Maryland, was part of the Great Migration, leaving the South to go first to Philadelphia and later settling in Harlem during its Renaissance.When Harlem Was Occupied Territory“I wanted to bring them out of the margins into the center,” Tubbs told The Daily Beast about the mothers. “I thought about writing about the wives or sisters of famous men, but I was really into the notion of the woman before the man.”While writing the book, Tubbs became pregnant with her son, and she found it breathtaking to think about what these women who had their children in the 1920s went through in a country hostile to their existence.“They found ways to humanize themselves and their children,” Tubbs said. “I was editing chapters with my son napping on my chest, and it was really deep and emotional.”Tubbs says the mothers’ passions and hopes for the future directly affected who their sons became.“Berdis Baldwin was an incredible writer who wrote poems and these letters to school that the teachers and principals talked about,” she said. “It’s similar to James Baldwin that even when he’s saying something so simple, it’s so poignant, and he inherited that directly from his mom. And when we think about Malcolm X as this radical figure who will do whatever it takes to express Black unity and Black pride, that comes from his mother. Marcus Garvey was this Pan-African activist who talked about the self-sufficiency of our community, and there’s direct connections between her organization and his, the Nation of Islam.”As for Martin Luther King Jr., he wouldn’t have had the resources he did without his mother, Tubbs says.“When she meets her husband, he’s considered almost illiterate and she has been to college, and she and her parents have built up Ebenezer Baptist Church, and when they get married, the husband moved in with her family. Their tradition is of going to Spellman and Morehouse, which MLK Jr. also does. And then he becomes the leader of the church with his father—all that is because of her and her family.”Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult and Real American: A Memoir, has known Tubbs since she was a freshman at Stanford University and Lythcott-Haims was a dean there. She thinks Tubbs’ book is unique in putting a spotlight on these women and how they influenced their sons.“Mothers are systemically overlooked,” she said. “We act like every amazing person is self-made, but these men had foundations in their childhood that no doubt strengthened them and emboldened them to become who they were.”Tubbs, who got her master’s degree in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies at Cambridge University, where she is now a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology, knew she wanted to write something connected to the erasure of Black women. It’s an erasure she has experienced firsthand, she says, and particularly because of her husband Michael Tubbs’ position (until recently he was the mayor of Stockton, California, where he started a universal basic income program that got national attention); people tend to give him credit for anything connected to their son.“We’ve been at events where I’m sitting next to him, and people come up to him and say, ‘Congratulations on the birth of your son,’” Tubbs said. “And I’m not someone who is quiet or reserved, so I’ll say, ‘I wasn’t aware that Michael could give birth. That’s amazing!’ Or they ascribe different characteristics to our son like, ‘He’s so strong just like his dad,’ or ‘He’s so smart like his dad,’ or ‘Maybe he’ll be mayor someday like his dad.’ That’s a constant with mothers being taken for granted, like there’s no way we’re the ones passing on strength or intellect.”While doing research for The Three Mothers, Tubbs ran into that erasure in the lack of details about the lives of these women—particularly about their lives before they were wives and mothers, so she researched the circumstances surrounding their lives. She found out that Berdis Baldwin’s mother died while giving birth to her on Deal Island, an isolated place whose sparse population depended on the water for work. Grenada, Louise Little’s birthplace, was known for resistance to white oppression. A spot there called Leapers Hill marks where dozens of people jumped to their deaths rather than surrender to the French trying to colonize them. And Alberta King was born into a loving family in Atlanta, a place that later became known as “the Black Mecca of the South,” where her father was a co-founder of the NAACP chapter.Along with personal histories, Tubbs includes some of the history of the United States during their lives, writing, for example, about how the country became more segregated under the administration of Woodrow Wilson, and about a progressive speech on race that Warren Harding gave while president. Tubbs writes about police brutality and life under Jim Crow to show the state of terror Black women often lived in. She also points out that after the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, it was his mother, activist Mamie Till, who made the decision to have an open casket at his public funeral so people could see her son’s bloated and disfigured body, which was a catalyst for the civil rights movement.The inclusion of these elements in the book show what Black women have endured, Lythcott-Haims says.“Through history, biography and analysis, we see the strength and resilience of Black women in the face of violence and degradation,” she said. “This is a love letter to mothering and to Black mothers, and how these women provided platforms on which their very famous offspring stand.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

The mayor of Mississippi’s capital city and a state senator are apologizing for shootings by city and state law enforcement officers 51 years ago at a historically Black college.

More than 60 years after his death, Richard Wright is again a bestselling author.

LeVar Burton has found another way to share his love of reading.

Amherst is on a path toward providing reparations to Black residents for past injustices following the town council's adoption of a resolution calling for the community to become an anti-racist town. President Joe Biden has even expressed support for creating a federal commission to study Black reparations, a proposal that's languished for decades in Congress. Anderson and other Black residents are taking part in virtual conversations this spring to talk about what reparations should look like. Can you put a price tag on trauma?”Miller and Andrews, meanwhile, have looked to Evanston, Illinois as a potential model, inviting a leading alderman from that community to speak with Amherst's Black residents next month. Driver believes the town’s higher education institutions — UMass Amherst, Amherst College and Hampshire College — should be part of the solution because of the role they've played in the town's racial divide.

Creighton coach Greg McDermott shouts during the first half of the team's NCAA college basketball game against Villanova, Wednesday, March 3, 2021, in Villanova, Pa. (AP Photo/Laurence Kesterson)OMAHA, Neb. – Five Creighton basketball players explained in a short pregame video Saturday why they were hurt by coach Greg McDermott's remarks in his locker room talk following a loss last weekend. AdCreighton players hadn't commented publicly about McDermott's remarks until five Black players spoke in the pregame video at CHI Health Center. Let's start the conversation.”The video ended in silence with all the Creighton players locked arm in arm on the court. “A lot of guys in that locker room were hurting from it, and I was hurting from what he said," Zegarowski said.

NEW YORK – With Election Day approaching and the pandemic ongoing, Oprah Winfrey is setting aside her usual book club recommendations and instead citing seven personal favorites, ranging from James Baldwin's landmark essays in “The Fire Next Time” to Mary Oliver's poetry collection “Devotions.”Winfrey is calling her choices “The Books That Help Me Through," works she values for “their ability to comfort, inspire, and enlighten.”"It’s a mix of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and spirituality, books I know and trust and revisit time and again,” she said in a statement Monday. Winfrey had planned a new choice every two months; her previous selection, Isabel Wilkerson's “Caste,” was announced in early August. Winfrey spokesperson Chelsea Hettrick said the seven books announced Monday would serve as “a bridge between selections,” and that no firm timeline had been set for future choices. “This year has brought such unprecedented change overall. We will re-evaluate in the coming weeks the selection plan and timing for the remainder of 2020,” she said.

NEW YORK – The Walt Disney Co. will make a follow-up to the 2019 live-action “The Lion King,” with Barry Jenkins, the director of the Oscar-winning “Moonlight” and the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk,” set to direct. The new “Lion King” grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide, so a sequel was perhaps always likely. Less expected was a “Lion King” with Jenkins directing. The film, Disney said, will explore the mythology of “The Lion King,” including Mufasa's origin story. Disney didn't announce any further plot details or casting on the new “Lion King” project, which was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.

NEW YORK – Filmmaker Ava DuVernay will be honored next month by MacDowell, which is presenting its inaugural Marian MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award to her media company and arts collective ARRAY. The award is named for the co-founder of MacDowell, the century-old artist residency in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein and many others have been visiting fellows. DuVernay, known for such acclaimed movies as “Selma” and “13th," founded ARRAY in 2012 as a way of amplifying the work of women and people of color. “I am touched that our narrative change collective ARRAY, which is built upon a mission to articulate and amplify stories from the widest range of art makers, is being honored in Ms. MacDowell’s name,” DuVernay said in a statement Sunday. Actress and former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, Jane Alexander, will present the award.

It’s time for some people to go to jail.” - Queen Latifah, recording artist and actor, in an interview with The Associated Press. Ask yourself ‘Why so long for Breonna Taylor?’” - Stevie Wonder, in a video message. “My heart is broken for the family of Breonna Taylor. once again we’re left with nothing that they try to make seem as something” - Ella Mai, recording artist, via Twitter. “Brett Hankison is indicted for shooting into the apartment NEXT to Breonna Taylor & not for KILLING HER.

Black lives matter. At the same time, companies must consider whether it makes sense for them to weigh in, especially on an issue as sensitive as race. Media giant ViacomCBS tweeted Black Lives Matter. Expressing solidarity with the Black Lives Movement is the right message, but everyone is jumping in on that bandwagon, said Allen Adamson, co-founder and managing partner of Metaforce a marketing and product consultancy. Each of these black lives matter.