Sinners Analysis, Encourage Yourself, and Upcoming Events

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Ephesians 6:12

Facing the Hellhounds on Our Trail:
The Metatextual Duality of the Blues in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners
(Click here for PDF version)
by C Liegh McInnis

In “Blues as Secularized Spirituals: Brief Thoughts on Cadillac Records and the Power and Importance of Mckinley Morganfield (here),” I stated that “blues music was created as an emotional and intellectual response to America’s incomplete and abandoned Reconstruction and that the blues is the soil from which springs all other American music, including the style and swagger that goes with it…blues music is a complex art form created by complex people.” This is the very loaded and pregnant notion that Rayan Coogler explores and unpacks in Sinners. He brilliantly shows this in the much-heralded scene when the entirety of African and African American music converges in the juke joint as the music bends the Eurocentric linear notion of time into the Afrocentric circular notion of be and being as the moment when past, present, and future converge and blend into the ecstatic state of now often known as being slain in the spirit, allowing the consumed to see and know truth beyond the limitations of the physical/tangible world. If you understand that Jimi Hendrix was a blues mane, then you understand that this is to what he is referring when asking “Are You Experienced?” True students of the blues know that the difference between traditional science fiction and Afrofuturism is the centering of the human. In traditional sci-fi, technology is the gateway to a better future in the same way that for white rockers drugs are the only ways to achieve the psychedelic experience. However, in Afrofuturism, the advancement of humanity is not based on how many weapons of mass destruction one can create but on one’s ability to master the metaphysical aspect of self to achieve the psychedelic state through spiritual elevation. For the blues men and women, the music is the psychedelic elixir that carries the congregation to the higher state. The reason that Thomas Dorsey could seamlessly transition from being one of the most prolific jazz and blues composers of his time to becoming “The Father of Gospel Music” is because blues men and women always saw themselves as conjurers in the same vein as their spiritual counterparts, using music to cast spells on crowds either to cure them of their ills or to help them see beyond their present gloom to know that better times are coming. This is element five of Kalamu ya Salaam’s six-part blues aesthetic from What Is Life?: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self: “An Optimistic Faith in the Ultimate Triumph of Justice in the Form of Karma. What is wrong will be righted. What is last will be first. Balance will be brought back into the world.” Moreover, this mission of blues conjurers flows from the first African artisans and continues through anyone who understands and embraces this work, which is why Coogler makes sure to include a figure who evokes the physical and musical aesthetic of Parliament Funkadelic as keepers of the tradition. Remember that it is George Clinton who instructs us to be healed by the music: “Now, this is what I want y’all to do/ If you got faults, defects, or shortcomings you know/ Like arthritis, rheumatism or migraines/ Whatever part of your body it is, I want you to lay it on your radio/ Let the vibes flow through, funk not only moves, it can remove, dig?/ The desired effect is what you get” (here). For the conjurer, music is the thing that can bend or deconstruct time and space either to enhance one’s current experience or transport one to another—both with the goal of liberating a captive from a physical hell into a spiritual haven.

Based on this, Prince was right that “Time [or the tangible world] is a trick” (here) because he had the blueprint given to him by Tommy Johnson, Robert Johnson, Sun Ra, Ishmael Reed, George Clinton, and others that African artisans have simultaneously served as griots and Anansi the Trickster to weave a web of music that crosses over white folks by seducing them through the sound so that they never fully hear the salvation in the lyrics. Though seen as warring enemies by Western sensibilities, blues and gospel are merely two sides of the same coin—one petitioning God for the spirit and the other petitioning God for the body with the understanding that, for Africans, there was never a division between the physical and the metaphysical. Since Africans never saw the body as an innately sinful thing, bodily movement was never sinful, and their heightened understanding of this kept them from confusing sensuality with sexuality. So, to petition God for one is to petition God for the other, which is why the juke joint and the café are secular sanctuaries, functioning as pressure valves to keep black folks from killing themselves and white folks. It’s only after African people embrace the Eurocentric confusion of sensuality and sexuality as the same thing that they begin to objectify and harm themselves as their oppressors had done to them. To this end, it’s important to note that the primary characters of Sinners, Smoke and Stack Moore, as twins, have very distinct and opposing personalities, which is why one chooses death of the body as a gateway to spiritual liberation and utopia and why one chooses survival of the body as a way to extend and engage his carnal lust. Through the twins, Coogler is riffing on human duality and our attempts to reconcile our dueling selves, which is made difficult because humans tend to be myopic about the layered nature of their humanity. Yet, what’s going to be missed by most people is that Coogler makes it clear that those infected with the virus of white supremacy are also merely pawns in the Devil’s game. The white man, who sells Smoke and Stack the building as a trap in which to rob and kill them, doesn’t realize that he’s just a piece on the Devil’s chessboard. This is why Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin remained adamant that white supremacy is rooted in insanity and self-hatred and that African people, seemingly, are the only ones who remained close enough to the Creator to cure our white family members from their illness. (However, both are also clear that loving one’s family or enemies does not include making oneself perpetually vulnerable to them.) Of course, after watching Sinners, the question remains: if African Americans were the moral compass of America, have enough of them embraced the treasures offered by the fallacy of white supremacy that humanity is now too far gone from being saved?

One of the most important aspects of Sinners is that the film opens with Smoke and Stack foreshadowing and affirming a lesson that was revealed by noted novelist, poet, and essayist Richard Wright that the North, in general, and Chicago, in particular, “ain’t nothing but Mississippi with tall buildings.” This essential point of the film is necessary to understand and contextualize the actions of Smoke and Stack that, not only are morals for those who can afford them, a point we’ll revisit later, but that any black person waiting on the mass of white folks—conservative or liberal—to give us what we need to be free is waiting on a slow, painful death because The Fugitive Slave Act or The Compromise of 1850, Tilden-Hayes Compromise aka The Bargain of 1877, the uselessness of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and, now, the second election of President Agent Orange are empirical evidence that, in the eyes of most white Americans or those infected with the virus of white supremacy, African peoples can only be seen as chattel to be used for profit and entertainment, never viewed as equals, and always viewed as threats to a world of white dominance. Notice in the above examples that anytime white folks are at an impasse and must compromise on something it is often the freedom and humanity of black folks that is sacrificed. Wright makes this clear in the final section of his 1945 novel, Black Boy, when he shows that the whites in Chicago are just as evil as the whites in Mississippi. This speaks not just to the East Coast artistic bias toward literary minimalism but also to the notion that Northern liberal racism is just as limiting as overt Southern racism. The second part of Black Boy, “American Hunger,” was not included in the initial publication of the novel because Wright refused to paint the North as Negro Heaven. Thus, that final section was deleted because Northern white liberal publishers could not bear to promote the notion that their North is just as heinously racist as the Confederate South. Further, the white, East Coast liberals who ran American publishing banned the final section of Black Boy because it eroded the moral position they perceived themselves to hold over Southern whites and to lessen the possibility of black folks embracing a more Black Nationalistic agenda over an integrationist agenda. Sadly, even today, intelligent black folks that I admire, such as comedian D. L. Hughley, don’t seem to understand, as evident in his debate with comedian Trevor Noah, that segregation was not a form of Black Nationalism and that black folks, initially, wanted to be desegregated not integrated. This is clearly the thrust of Smoke, Stack, and the majority of black folks in the film, even if they disagree on how best to accomplish their liberation.

Although W.E.B. Du Bois is considered the father of Pan-Africanism for renouncing his U.S. citizenship and moving to Africa, Smoke and Stack as entrepreneurs are more Booker T. Washington than Du Bois. For those of you who would turn your nose up at that notion, remember that Marcus Garvey, when he first came to America, scheduled a visit with Washington rather than Du Bois because he understood Washington’s ideology of “casting down your buckets where you are” and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” to be more aligned with his Black Nationalist ideology of building a world for oneself rather than begging one’s oppressor to love you. This is why Mound Bayou, Mississippi, is evoked early in the film because between 1820 and 1877 it became one of the first sovereign spaces for newly freed slaves due to an equal emphasis on economic and educational sovereignty and moral fortitude. To this point, it seems that Smoke and Stack understand in 1932 what it took Rev. Dr. King too long to realize as he stated to actor and activist Harry Belafonte that he had “integrated my people into a burning house” (here) as his “dream had turned into a nightmare” (here). Even after initially denouncing the call for Black Power, King asserted that “Black Power…is in fact a reaction to the failure of White Power to deliver the promises and to do it in a hurry.” He added that although “the Negro is powerless, he should seek to amass political and economic power to reach his legitimate goals...,” concluding that “America must be made a nation in which its multi-racial people are partners in power” and that “My slogan is build, baby, build; organize, baby, organized. Learn, baby, learn so that you can earn, baby, earn” (here). Furthermore, King admits in Where Do We Go from Here, Chaos or Community? that his real concern with the term was that it would scare and alienate white allies not that it was a bad or destructive concept. To this point, Smoke and Stack must be viewed no differently than any black businessmen or black revolutionaries who either lose their way due to their hubris or are overtaken by the unstoppable wave of white supremacy. Smoke and Stack do not fail because they are less intelligent or afraid of white people but because black people are often fighting two forces whereas white folks are only fighting one. White people are only fighting an internal force of imperfection that is common to all humans whereas black people are fighting that internal force while simultaneously fighting the outside force of white supremacy, which is why we have been taught that we must be “twice as good as white folks.”

Those black folks who frown on respectability politics don’t understand that being “twice as good as white folks” refers to being physically and spiritually better than our oppressors because, often, it’s our natural internal “sin” or “vices” or “normal human imperfections” that make us vulnerable to being defeated by those infected with the fallacy of white supremacy. It’s not only black people who succumb to financial bribes or sexual impropriety, but we don’t control enough of the power structure to ensure that our liberation movement isn’t stifled or limited when one of our leaders has a misstep. The reason that so many black folks hold President Barack Obama in such high regard, despite differing with his political policies, is because President Obama never allowed his personal imperfections to make him vulnerable to the traps of white supremacy. Many of you know that I’ve spent years writing about the combination of Negro ineptitude and white supremacy as the ultimate downfall of our race. As Sinners shows through Delta Slim’s alcoholism, Stack’s ego and lust, and Cornbread’s inability to remain focused on the task at hand, white supremacy, alone, has never enabled white people to obtain and maintain control over African peoples. It’s only when African peoples succumb to their inner demons that those infected with white supremacy are able to oppress us. To this point, having Native Americans chasing and attempting to expel the vampire from their land early in the film symbolizes and reminds viewers, in this age of attack on “immigrants,” that not only are the vast majority of us in America trespassing but that whites rule this landmass because Native peoples were able to be corrupted and divided. Moreover, the film being set in Mississippi, which comes from the Native American (Ojibwe) word, “Misi-ziibi,” is apropos to this point because Mississippi has retained many of its original Native American names for cities, counties, waterways, and parks. As such, props to Coogler and his staff for doing their homework and using actual members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (here) to show that they are still around and are using their knowledge and connection to their history to fight against the current devils. Thus, the scene forewarns viewers that all who are not aware of what happened to Native Americans on this landmass will be doomed to the same fate. (Here is a poem about the importance of remembering Misi-ziibi history.) As such, it is critically important to retain and remain rooted in one’s ancient ancestry to be less vulnerable to the ills of white supremacy. Moreover, this point asserts that gold or money is never the best way to fight the Devil or one’s devils because those things are of the Devil. In the same way that Pahom realizes this too late in Leo Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?,” by thinking that a physical solution can solve a metaphysical issue, the only characters in Sinners that achieve inner peace and serenity are those who forsake mammon for love, spirituality, and family.

As a Clarksdale youth, I was raised on the battlefield of saints and sinners with the warring soundtracks of God and the Devil’s music; yet, that ever-present dividing line wasn’t always easy to decipher as the church organist often sounded a lot like the juke joint piano player, and the wailing juke joint sister seemed quite similar to the soulful moans of Sunday morning sirens. So, I’ve lived with this dichotomy my entire life—having its history handed to me from Little Richard’s seesawing denial of self to follow God, to Clarksdale native Sam Cooke purportedly being killed as God’s punishment for leaving the church, to Marvin Gaye being certain that sexual healing was a major step to spiritual salvation, to Parliament Funkadelic calling down the Mothership as a metaphor to The Second Coming, to Al Green making the pulpit into a stage and a stage into a pulpit, and to Prince using sexual orgasm as a trope for nothing being more satisfying as being touched by God. In truth, it was only after seeing Prince open for Rick James and causing a caramel beauty in her early twenties to faint during “Head” that I realized what being slain in the spirit truly is. And, in an even stranger plot twist, my eighth-grade shop teacher, Mr. Melvin Tillis, one of my favorite teachers, owned one of the jumpingest juke joints in Clarksdale, The River Mount, about which his son, Reverend Charles Johnson, would preach against as Satan’s sin palace each Sunday at King’s Temple. (Talk about the son turning the tables on the father.) Yet, no one was immune from Rev. Johnson’s banter as he said from the pulpit more than a couple of times, “You can’t run with the wolves on Saturday night and come lie down with the sheep on Sunday morning, C Liegh!” To which, at the tender age of sixteen, I’d give Rev that look, “Hey, mane, don’t be putting my sins…err…business in the streets like that. There’s a lot mo’ sinners in here you can point out.” While I admired and loved Mr. Tillis and Rev. Johnson equally, it was clear that well-defined lines had been drawn, and one was expected to choose a side, despite the fact that both men were clear that the white devils were the greatest threat to our community. As such, Sinners is another necessary discourse of how African people warred with the demons and principalities behind the physical faces of Jim Crow to reclaim their spirits and their bodies. Unfortunately, that ongoing war has left many internal or communal scars still needing to be healed, and Sinners seems to be a great way of starting that process through the conversation of what’s normally left unsaid. Although Coogler clearly agrees with Du Bois that “all art is propaganda,” with Sinners he’s showing more than he’s dictating that African Americans have been, are, and can be more beautiful and powerful than their greatest dreams if they can stop stopping themselves by learning/remembering who they are. This includes remembering what they have survived, what they have built, how they have constantly rebuilt what was taken or destroyed, and how their art, particularly their music, has sustained and propelled them at every juncture of the way.

Many who are unfamiliar with the history of the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta seem confused by two Chinese characters having such a prominent role in the film. However, as I discussed a year ago in “The Mythological People of Color Coalition” (here), the Mississippi Delta has a history of a Chinese population that dates to the end of the Civil War when white “planters recruited the Chinese as a possible replacement for the freed African-American laborers” (Wilson). Yet, because many of these newcomers had a supportive Mother Country and could arrive with certain means, the Chinese soon “sought economic success rather than social recognition [and] turned to another activity — opening and running grocery stores…by the early 1870s” (Wilson). As a result, Afro-Mississippians and the Chinese have always had uneasy tension from the resentment of Afro-Mississippians who understood the complicated elements that allowed what they deemed as outsiders to be in a position to exploit them while taking advantage of the very rights that Afro-Mississippians had fought diligently to secure. To be clear, this is not to say that all Asians hate or look down on African Americans. The Chinese community has become a mainstay in the Mississippi Delta in various aspects of life. But, based on voting habits and economic conflicts, Asian Americans have never seen their liberation movement as inextricably tied to that of African Americans. Moreover, Chinese businesses, generally grocery stores, restaurants, and laundry services, were mostly in black neighborhoods or on the edges of downtown, just far enough from the white gaze not to be considered a threat to the white power structure. They were deemed by whites as the “model minority” with whom African Americans developed a necessary but complicated relationship that was often strained.

Based on this history, I’m not sure what meaning to assign to the rallying cry to fight the vampires directly coming from Grace Chow, a Chinese woman, given that many black folks, then and today, are split on how they judge the relationship between African Americans and Chinese Americans. This moment or aspect of the film is especially curious since, in a traditional sense, the good guys don’t win, unless one exclusively identifies Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore as the only “good guy” and has deemed others, especially Wunmi Mosaku, either as not a “good guy” or as not a primary character. Yet, that would be a myopic or surface understanding of the text in which physical survival and obtaining riches are the only ways that one defines success. I’d argue that Wunmi carries both the moral fiber and the weight of African ancestry in the film, and to watch her die seems to be a commentary on how Afro-Mississippians, in particular, and African Americans, in general, are in such a dysfunctional place because we have lost both our moral fiber and connection to our African ancestry from embracing whiteness as a way to survive and thrive. In short, by losing our Wunmi, many of us have become the vampires that we once dreaded. Therefore, is the rallying cry from a Chinese woman meant to be seen as the importance of people of color building coalitions or meant to be seen as the result of another foolhardy engagement (alliance) by African Americans? Or, based on the ambivalence in which the film seems to end, is Grace’s breakdown meant to show that all people of color are vulnerable to being infected with and destroyed by white supremacy if they aren’t able to maintain their moral fiber and connection to their ancient culture. Like the African Americans, Grace and her husband, Bo, are equally surrounded and protected by their ancestors as seen in both the juke joint time-traveling scene and when the vampires are readying themselves to invade. Both scenes include the appearance of a Chinese geisha and the mythical Sun Wukong (孫悟空) aka the Monkey King, a literary and religious figure. Yet, Grace is unable to take solace in her ancestry or culture. This shows that just because one is surrounded by one’s ancestry doesn’t mean that one is able (has done the work) to connect to and obtain its protection. To be clear, I don’t perceive Grace’s action as malicious but as misguided because she relies on her physical understanding rather than her spiritual understanding. Grace loves her daughter and desires to protect her, but she does not have the faith of Wunmi, which causes her to succumb to her fears and act irrationally.

To this point, Coogler takes an imaginative approach to the traditional trope that vampires must be invited into one’s dwelling or personal space. Although a standard element of vampire stories, it’s used in Sinners as a metaphor for inviting outsiders into your home, community, or culture who only come to steal, coopt, colonize, enslave, or kill. The blues as a ritual art was created by black people for black people and shared primarily among themselves—much like field hollers, shouts, and spirituals—to comfort, heal, and inspire themselves. Of course, the lure to earn a profit from outside forces made it impossible for black people to keep the art to themselves as white people from all over came knocking at their doors just to get a taste. The moment the blues became a thing to be commodified beyond black culture was the moment that African Americans relinquished their juju. Satan or the lead vampire asking for Preacher Boy in return for allowing everyone else to live symbolizes how black people sold their souls via their music in the hope that white money would improve their lot in life. Yet, the perversion of black souls via their music being relinquished to outsiders has been more detrimental than not having money. Based on the spiritual imagery in both the blues and the film, it’s not a stretch to view the vampires’ gold coins as the thirty pieces of silver that Judas Iscariot accepts to betray Yeshua. Once Judas realizes what he has received isn’t worth what he has relinquished, he understands that his life is now worthless and commits suicide. Having this spiritual understanding of what’s valuable enables Wunmi and Smoke to resist the temptation to exchange Preacher Boy because they understand that their community’s music is the soul of the people. As Prince stated regarding the importance of African Americans owning and controlling their art, “If you don’t own your masters, your masters own you” (here); black communities have suffered financially and socially as outsiders have garnered the lion’s share of the profits from black art while generally funding art that often reduces black people to the worst aspect of themselves. This is especially true since the blues represented the most interior self of the black community, what one would call our backroom culture. All communities have living room and backroom culture. The living room culture is what we show to and share with outsiders, and the backroom culture is what we keep for ourselves. For instance, the jokes that one tells at home are not normally the jokes one tells in public because those not of the home will often misunderstand or, worse, misuse the jokes against the people of the house. One can argue that African Americans, through our art, have shared too much of ourselves with the world or have not controlled how those things have been shared with the world, and it has led to our current dysfunctional state.

Because white supremacy causes Caucasians to fetishize the black body and live vicariously through whatever art black folks create, the blues became a primary way for whites to consume our energy without our burden. Yet, these outsiders are vampires with an insatiable lust, not just for our art, but for the art that reflects what they deem as the most primitive nature of humanity. Either by being entertained by it or simply selling it, eventually, the vampires, through their superpower of money, begin to dictate the type of art that is created by black people, often limiting them to those things that affirm stereotypes and gratify the white lust for black sexuality, dysfunction, and rage. (It is no coincidence that many white consumers of black art are often seeking the “blackest” experience they can find, which tends to connote blackness to the lowest or most base forms of emotion and behavior.) The black community is literally sucked dry by outsiders as it is diminished to a caricature of itself for the entertainment of white folks. This reduction of black creativity serves to reduce black humanity whereas white artists are allowed to build upon the blues foundation and, then, expand their creative selves, allowing them greater opportunities for human expression and profit. (Eric Clapton can be praised as one of the greatest blues and rock guitarists while also profiting off reggae. The Beatles can build on the blues foundation, dominate rock-n-roll, and be lauded for their experimental efforts of merging Eastern and Western sounds. However, Prince must choose between being a soul, funk, or rock artist, and when he becomes a master of everything, he’s simply ignored, if not belittled, for being indefinable or not easily categorized.) In an attempt not to be marginalized, many black people (artists and non-artists) have succumbed to the lure of white money and status only to realize when it’s too late that their soul is more valuable than the payment they got for it in return. As my brown-liquor, E&J-(Erk and Jerk aka Easy Jesus)-drinking uncle often said, “Nephew, fish and black folks are easily distracted by shiny things.” Thus, it’s significant that Stack and Mary become demons for Satan because, unlike Smoke and Wunmi, they are unable to resist the allure of Satan’s gold, which leads to the breach of their community. While Grace provides the direct invitation to the vampires, Stack and Mary provide the initial gateway as their embracing of the Dionysian over the Apollonian lifestyle allows their lust for fun, sex, and money to override their rational senses. Still, it cannot be ignored that the direct invitation to the vampires comes from Grace, whose primary relationship with black people is business. Jewish and Chinese stores were located in black communities because, in most cases, black people didn’t have the capital to create their own businesses, which were often burned or taken if they became “too successful.” This is not to say that all relationships between blacks, Jews, and Chinese were exploitive, but to make the point that everyone seems to profit off black talent and dollars except black people. (Even the black dollar leaves the black community within seven hours of black folks earning it.) Therefore, Sinners causes one to wonder what would have happened if more black enclaves could have become as initially successful as Mound Bayou. If the storeowner from whom Smoke and Stack purchased their wares were black, would the outcome have been different? Of course, my job as the analyst is not to project onto the work what isn’t there but to analyze what is. Thus, I return to wondering why the invitation to the vampires was placed in Grace’s mouth, and I don’t have a clear answer to provide a meaning. Without enough evidence, it wouldn’t be fair to the character, the film, or Coogler as writer and director. While I have provided three possible meanings, I find it plausible that others could choose either of those as the answer or provide another meaning. What we know is that Coogler wanted those vampires to breach the juke joint to move the plot forward because, regardless of how the vampires enter the community, it’s never good for the community.

Coogler takes the time to differentiate between haints and vampires when Wunmi is trying to determine with which they are dealing. (Not to belabor that point, in the first paragraph of “The Unghosting of Prince in Morris Day’s On Time: A Princely Life in Funk,” I explain what a haint is and its purpose for those who don’t know.) At this moment, Coogler is showing that African people never chose science over spirituality as their faith existed in a circular relationship with science. It’s not made clear if we are to view Wunmi as a griot or a healer, not that one can’t be both, but it is made clear that she’s the spiritual center and anchor of the community who uses the science of the land to supplement her knowledge of the divine. Because of her well-rounded (multidimensional) understanding of the world she inhabits, she is the only person who has the discernment (both scientific and spiritual) to defend the community from the outsiders. This is one of the finer examples that Coogler uses to show that blues isn’t just a musical form but a culture that African Americans have developed by blending their African culture(s) with their North American existence(s). One could argue that the black peoples living on the Coastal Carolinas, in New Orleans, and in the Mississippi Delta and Mississippi Gulf Coast have retained their Africanness in how they actually live more than black folks living anywhere else in America even if many of the black folks in Mississippi don’t realize that they have. That’s why Wunmi’s discernment is so essential. To have something and not know what it is or why one has it can often be just as useless as not having it. But, to have something and know its origin and purpose enables one to know its full power and beauty. This is why Wunmi can ease the chaos, even if temporarily, in Smoke’s mind when they reunite and in the community as they prepare for battle. Interestingly enough, Grace, who’s lived in the community long enough to be considered extended family, is the one who is unable to be calmed and readied by Wunmi’s discernment, which may speak to the inability of outsiders to understand and embrace that blues is a culture and not just as a musical form.

As mentioned earlier, poet, playwright, fiction writer, essayist, editor, and activist Kalamu ya Salaam shows, in What Is Life?: The Reclaiming of the Black Blues Self, that blues music is merely one aspect of blues culture that has a distinct six-element aesthetic. There is, then, blues culture, blues condition, and blues music. Taking these three holistically, the blues is a socioeconomic and political sensibility that is often articulated through interpersonal circumstance, which means that every aspect of life is understood through that lens. For instance, one understands that one’s romantic relationship suffers or is impacted in some way due to the institutional oppression of one’s group or that one’s dysfunctional romantic relationship is merely a mirror or metaphor for the existential nature of one’s life. A specific example of the blues innately or organically reacting to or reflecting the socio-political matrix of the times is B. B. King’s “Sweet Sixteen” (1960). In the fourth stanza, King shifts or merges this seemingly basic love lament into socio-political commentary when he adds, “My brother is in Korea, baby; my sister is down in New Orleans./ Well, you know I’m having so much trouble woman./ Baby, I wonder what in the world is going to happen to me” (here). Before these lines, “Sweet Sixteen” is merely a song about heartache caused by a woman who just won’t do right. But, adding these two lines expands the song’s depth into a discourse about black life as a mosaic of struggle in which every aspect of black life is infected by the socio-political umbrella of white supremacy. The romantic loneliness/isolation of the song is merely a trope or one aspect of cultural loneliness/isolation endured by people who have no control over their lives, often dispersed to various parts of the world by the whim of others to do the bidding of others with very little reward and mostly heartache. Forty-four years later, Prince is working within this same tradition with “Call My Name” (2004). In the middle of a song about loneliness/isolation from one’s lover, Prince adds “Heard a voice on the news saying people want to stop the war./ If they had a love as sweet as you, they’d forget what they were fighting for./ What’s the matter with the world today? The land of the free? Somebody lied./ They can bug my phone/ peep around my home./ They’ll only see you and me making love inside” (here). Similar to King’s “Sweet Sixteen,” Prince’s song both infers and proclaims that love is not some whimsical feeling that exists as its own entity, separate and apart from everything else, and that for most African Americans it is almost impossible to discuss romance without discussing the socio-political matrix in which people exist. Their African sensibility thinks in terms of a holistic understanding of the world one inhabits as opposed to a segmented or fragmented understanding of the world that one inhabits. Thus, it is only after enough African Americans have accepted the corporate separation of art from ritual that increasingly more African American art becomes devoid of innate or organic sociopolitical commentary, creating more art that is useless in comforting, healing, and liberating the people who produced it. Rejecting ritual for money because ritual makes the vampires uncomfortable causes much of African-American art to devolve into spectacle that celebrates and perpetuates communal dysfunction. While Smoke and Stack certainly desire to earn a profit, the goal is not the money but that the money gives them the ability to create their own Mound Bayou. The problem is that Stack seems not to have learned the lesson from being exiled from Mound Bayou due to their father’s wayward ways. Money, alone, cannot build sovereignty for black folks because a fool and his money are soon parted. Wunmi’s discernment created by her knowledge and love for her African self is often the missing ingredient that causes black folks to implode due to their ineptitude/avarice. And, if sin is a self-inflected negative, then the destruction of Smoke and Stack’s juke joint and many other black ventures are due, in some part, to Negro ineptitude manifested through various vices as much as they are due to the evil of those infected with white supremacy.

While the results of what people define as sin are usually destructive, it must be understood that people commit those sins because they are pleasurable in some way. As the aforementioned uncle once told me, “Nephew, I like getting high. I love how I feel on crack. It’s the terrible things that crack causes me to do and what it does to my body that I hate.” The same can be said of sugar, which is three times as addictive as crack. People lose limbs, lose sight, and die from diabetes because they can’t stop eating sugar. Similarly, they “sin” because it feels good or because it temporarily relieves an emptiness or a pain that they have. People drink excessively, smoke, have an abundance of sex, shop abundantly, overeat, and engage in many other self-inflicted negatives because they are unable to find the peace and serenity that they need naturally. Satan knows this, which is why Coogler has the vampire offer the one thing that African Americans in 1932 wanted more than anything—citizenship, national familyhood, and worthiness. Where Robert Johnson purportedly sold his soul to the Devil to become a master guitarist, which, by the way, is a story first attributed to Tommy Johnson, Coogler’s Satan is seeking the souls of the entire race with the false gift of acceptance and love. If we understand that the blues has always worked partly through a Judeo-Christian framework, then we understand that Satan’s primary tool for gaining or seducing souls is music. As the most alluring archangel, one of Satan’s superpowers is music, which is why head-cutting (battle of the bands) takes on such a supernatural essence in blues battles. The goal is to show which musician can whip the crowd into the greatest frenzy. Again, the music is the psychedelic elixir to transport the souls to a higher state of being. This is why Coogler stages a head-cutting battle between Satan’s band and Preacher Boy. (Shoutout to the head-cutting scene in Crossroads. Y’all can hate on the film if y’all want; yet, it’s a damn good flick. But, I digress.) The choice of which path to take is never as easy as it seems and is often complicated by dueling internal and external forces that can push or pull one in either direction based on one’s lived experiences and discernment.

To this point, Coogler seems to leave us with questions rather than answers as he provides an ambivalent or open-ended ending. Wunmi and Smoke achieve their spiritual union and bliss once Smoke is done chasing physical gain. On the one hand, one can perceive Smoke’s final action as revenge or a need for physical justice. Yet, on the other hand, one can perceive Smoke’s final action as a physical sacrifice, engaging in a battle that he can’t win but will deliver him to his beloved Wunmi and child. However, Preacher Boy does not “drop” or relinquish his guitar for the Lord as pleaded by his minister father but continues to play the blues well into his old age. When we see Preacher Boy as an elder, this moment of the film is given more metaphoric weight by the casting of poet and spoken word artist Saul Williams as Preacher Boy’s father, Jedidiah Moore, casting blues legend Buddy Guy as the elder Preacher Boy, and casting Mississippi native and current blues guitar superstar Christone “Kingfish” Ingram as Preacher Boy’s lead/rhythm guitarist. (Additionally, Mississippi blues legend Bobby Rush plays the harmonica parts earlier in the film for Delta Slim.) The scene bookends the film, bringing the message full circle—troping the early juke joint spiritual transformation scene—by having the past, present, and future of the blues on stage and screen simultaneously, showing that the ancient African artisans are still time and space traveling, delivering the word to the people as they balance the universe against the evil that persists. Furthermore, I appreciate that Coogler makes Preacher Boy’s father a man of love rather than judgment. When a young Preacher Boy returns to the church bloodied and worn from his battle with Satan, his father doesn’t forsake him but welcomes him home to the congregation. (Insert “Prodigal Son” story here.) Coogler could have made the film’s ending less ambivalent by making the minister a charlatan or judgmental hardliner who is more concerned with casting out sinners than saving them. But, he doesn’t do that. Again, as someone raised amid this battlefield, I knew more ministers like Jedidiah Moore than the ones who are often portrayed in film and television or ridiculed online. (Casting Williams as Rev. Moore provides even more depth because the poet has always held the role of preacher, prophet, and soothsayer in every civilization, especially the African and African American communities.) To be clear, I’m not saying that there isn’t an abundance of jack-leg preachers. But, I am saying that there are more Jedidiah Moores than society often recognizes, and those Jedidiah Moores, who may feel that they have lost their children to the world, have also poured enough love and discernment into their wandering, blues-traveling children so that they may be having more of a positive impact than the eyes solely fixed on the letter of the law can see. Additionally, the ending seems to affirm what I deem as the eighth element of the blues aesthetic, based on Salaam’s original six, “The Acceptance of the Contradictory Nature of Life: Life has good and bad, and African Americans often emphasize acknowledging and addressing the bad while celebrating the good” (here). Juneteenth is an example of this. Although we are celebrating our freedom, we are still acknowledging the evil of the vampires for attempting to keep us enslaved or ignorant of our freedom. Moreover, black art is not so much about ridding the world of evil but learning how to overcome and, if need be, survive or navigate that evil as a part of living. Furthermore, the Africans who didn’t choose death over slavery accepted slavery as just another aspect of the contradictory nature of life that must be navigated if not overcome. In the African and African-American narrative, there is rarely the “happily ever after” ending but an understanding that the characters survived to fight another day. This is seen clearly in literary icon Chinua Achebe’s “Marriage Is a Private Affair,” in which the story ends without the grandfather making a decision to resolve the problem. That’s because Achebe is not concerned about the particular issue of the story but about informing and arming African people with the understanding that, for African people, the battle for identity is daily, ongoing, and never-ending and that even the decision or resolution made today will be challenged and must be made again tomorrow. As such, Achebe is more concerned that African people understand how difficult and long-lasting the war for a positive sense of self and first-class citizenship is against those infected with white supremacy so that African peoples don’t falter or quit once they face difficult times. To this point, when Preacher Boy sees Stack and Mary after almost fifty years of thinking that they were defeated and dead, he is astonished but not afraid because he has the discernment that they can be defeated, that he is protected even without Stack telling him that, and that he has a better home waiting on him. Yet, those without the discernment of Wunmi, Smoke, and Preacher Boy will be fated to fall victim to Stack and Mary’s seduction simply because they have relinquished their blues aesthetic.

McInnis is a poet, short story writer, Prince scholar, 2025 Finalist for the Mississippi Poet Laureate, co-founder of the Jackson State University Creative Writing Program, the former editor/publisher of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts: Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller), one co-authored work, Brother Hollis: The Sankofa of a Movement Man, which discusses the life of a Mississippi Civil Rights icon, and the former First Runner-Up of the Amiri Baraka/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Award sponsored by North Carolina State A&T. Additionally, his work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Obsidian, Callaloo, African American Review, Black Fire—This Time Vols. 1 and 2, Tribes, Konch, Down to the Dark River, an anthology of poems about the Mississippi River, and Black Hollywood Unchained, which is an anthology of essays about Hollywood’s portrayal of African Americans.

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Hey Y’all Again,

Often, each of us finds ourselves needing encouragement, but sometimes there seems to be no one who can provide that encouragement. This is when we must know how to encourage ourselves. Sometimes this can be done purely through our own volition or by exposing ourselves to works of art that can aid us. I’m sure y’all probably know this song, but Micha Stampley’s “The Corinthian Song,” even for a heathen like myself, is one of my favorite songs, especially when I must encourage myself. I’ve been so moved by this song that I once quoted it in an interview that I gave, which y’all can watch here. I hope that these two vids help to strengthen and encourage someone by reminding you that you “are a vessel filled with power and a treasure from the Lord.”

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This morning’s Friday Forum will feature Ms. Liz Brister, Executive Director of Downtown Jackson Partners, who will provide an update on the expansion and development of Downtown Jackson. For more information about today’s Friday Forum and upcoming Friday Forums, see the calendar of events below or contact Nicole McNamee at nmcnamee72@gmail.com.

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Beginning tonight, to celebrate the grand opening of its Main Street Cultural Center, The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) will hold five events the next two weekends. This weekend will feature Big Chief Pie and Queen Denise from the Monogram Hunters, blues legend Jesse Robinson, an unforgettable night of soul-stirring jazz, soul, and R&B with renowned musician eZra Brown, and a heartfelt afternoon of music and fellowship featuring the Utica Community Choir. Next weekend will feature internationally acclaimed poet and performer Sunni Patterson with her band at the Main Street Cultural Center. Patterson has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TEDWomen, featured on Grammy award-winning Hip-Hop albums, and currently serves as a Resident Artist for both the City of New Orleans’ Claiborne Corridor Cultural Initiative and Junebug Productions. For more information on both weekends, see the calendar of events below. Sipp Culture weaves research, development, and local agriculture with contemporary media and storytelling to promote the legacy and vision of Utica, Mississippi, and the possibility of what all of Mississippi can be. Their place-based model program promotes economic empowerment and self-sufficiency of low- and moderate-income people through education, technical assistance, training, and mentoring in agribusiness. The Main Street Cultural Center will provide a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and an intimate venue for presenting music, film, and multidisciplinary performance and visual art. It will also serve as Sipp Culture’s primary presenting venue for year-round arts programming.​

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Tomorrow, The Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience (The MAX) will begin a new program, Earth’s Bounty at the Max, which will be held the first Saturday of every month and feature:

8:00 – noon: Earth’s Bounty Farmers Market + Live Music
9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Free admission to The MAX
11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Art activities in upstairs classroom

For more information, including vendor opportunities, see the calendar of events below.

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If you missed the Polished Solid #PopLife40 Prince Symposium, which celebrated 40 years of Prince’s Around the World in a Day, The Family’s self-titled album, and Sheila E.’s Romance 1600, you missed another great three days of Prince scholarship and community. Symposium curator and NYU Professor De Angela Duff has started uploading the videos of all the panels and roundtables, which y’all can watch here. These include the brilliant Prince scholar Edgar Kruize’s presentation, “Love Is the Color This Place Imparts,” which deconstructs how the album cover artwork of Around the World in a Day tells a cohesive story to reflect the message(s) of the songs, the first keynote, featuring The Family, and the second keynote with saxophonist Eddie M, who is C Liegh’s favorite horn player to play with Prince, Maceo Parker notwithstanding.

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In mid-May, the Jackson State University Margaret Walker Alexander Center will host the 55th Gibbs-Green Commemoration to memorialize the 1970 attack on JSU by the Jackson Police Department, the Mississippi Highway Patrol, and the Mississippi National Guard, which took the lives of Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, a twenty-one-year-old JSU student, and James Earl Green, a seventeen-year-old Jim Hill High School Student along with wounding eighteen others as law enforcement fired over four hundred rounds into Alexander Hall, a female Dorm. Here is a link to C Liegh McInnis’ article, “The Jackson State University Assassination: What Does It Continue to Mean in the Annals of Time?,” that was published twenty-five years ago on the Thirtieth Commemoration of the attack, and here is a link to C Liegh’s poem, “Tree of Life (Black Colleges Be Here),” that addresses the attack and the general struggles and successes of HBCUs. Additionally, everyone should purchase a copy of Dr. Nancy Bristow’s Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College, and here is the link to C Liegh and Dr. Bristow’s interview about her book at the Mississippi Book Festival. For more information, see the calendar of events below.

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Poet, photographer, editor of Valley Voices, and Chair of the Mississippi Valley State University English Department, Dr. John Zheng has a new poem, “Site Visit,” about blues legend Mississippi John Hurt, in Vox Populi, which can be read here. Additionally, Doc Zheng has a photo essay, “Avalon and Valley: Mississippi John Hurt’s Blues Base,” published in Mississippi Folklife, which can be viewed and read here.

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This week’s Torch Literary Arts feature is poet and Pushcart-nominated Deanna Whitlow whose stories and essays have been published by Raging Opossum Press, Allium Journal, Black Fox Literary, Identity Theory, Mulberry Literary, and others. To read more about Whitlow and her work, go here.

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This summer, Mississippi native, fiction writer, playwright, and health activist Katrina Byrd is offering a new, two-week class, One-on-One Writing Coaching with Katrina Byrd to help writers and those thinking about writing to build writing skills, share writing strategies, and help writers find their voice. Package includes initial interview work plan for your project, four coaching sessions, weekly feedback, two virtual work spaces, asynchronous encouragement and support, and an exit interview for a total price of $875. For information, see the calendar of events below.

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The Watering Hole hosts the only Southern writing retreat for poets of color and draws 50 to 60 poets to the retreat each year. The goal is to provide a space and resources for poets of color to develop who they are. They have released their workshop for the remainder of the year, which y’all can see here and here. For more information, visit their website here.

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Lolwe is offering masterclasses on multiple creative writing genres and techniques. For more details, see the calendar of events below.

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Rise and Read Free Press is an African-American book publisher owned by Mississippi native, former air traffic controller, and international contractor, Harold Phifer. Their latest offering is Dean Conan’s A Fool Indeed, which is the sequel to Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything. In A Fool Indeed, Charlie Mo is a changed man who marries the one, starts his own business, and is looking towards the future. As fate would have it, the monstrous kingpin of the city, Dog Sugar, sets his sights on Charlie Mo, and when Charlie doesn’t play ball, Dog Sugar is hellbent on making Charlie Mo’s life a living hell. Life gets rocky, and death comes knocking. It becomes clear that Texas isn’t big enough for the lover boy and the king. For more information and to purchase A Fool Indeed, go here. Additionally, readers can download for free Harold Phifer’s My Bully, My Aunt, and Her Final Gift by going here. For more about Rise and Read Press, go here.

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The Mississippi Writers Guild (MWG) will meet in May and feature a talk by Julie Whitehead, who lives and writes from Mississippi. An award-winning freelance writer, Whitehead covered disasters from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina throughout her career. She writes on mental health, mental health education, and mental health advocacy. For more information, see the calendar of events below.

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Narrative 4 is an organization of creatives that uses storytelling to build community and civic engagement. They have partnered with National Schools Network to curate a national initiative aimed at overcoming the loneliness epidemic by fostering greater social connections between schools. The N4NSN is a community of select schools from across the United States, committed to experiential learning, intentional community, and supporting students and educators through storytelling and the arts. Twice a year, a new group of schools will be admitted to the N4NSN, committing to a 3-month program where they will experience and receive training to facilitate Story Exchanges, participate in an array of community workshops, and utilize Narrative 4 tools and resources in their classrooms. To apply to participate in these series, see the calendar of events below.

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Mississippi-based visual artist Justin Ransburg—who creates illustrations, comic books, mural paintings, and mixed media artworks—has posted his latest newsletter, which can be read here. Ransburg has created numerous public murals in Jackson and surrounding areas in Mississippi. His work is often filled with lively character designs that tell stories of their lives and usually are a reflection of specific personal interests or societal events reimagined in a new form. In 2016, he co-founded the Jackson Drawing Club as an effort to bring artists together to share techniques, improve their ideas, collaborate, and develop the mentality necessary to thrive as an artist. Currently, Ransburg teaches drawing and comics creation classes at 601 Studios while maintaining his artistic practice. Y’all can read and subscribe to his newsletter here, and for more information, y’all can view his website here.

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Muntu Dance Theatre hosts dance workshops on various Saturdays throughout the month. For the next workshop, see the calendar of events below.

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Rooted Magazine has a great new interview with Jackson, Mississippi, native Bebe Wolf—an artist and owner of Wolf Studio that was founded in 1946 by her parents and remains a mainstay in the city—as part of its “Questionnaires” series that y’all can read here. Y’all can also watch part of Wolf’s interview here. Rooted is an online magazine dedicated to telling stories of place to people who call Mississippi home. To check out more of Rooted’s great content, go here. Rooted publishes weekly questionnaires with interesting Mississippi transplants, natives, and expats. Their lagniappe issues feature original prose, poetry, art, and photography from Mississippi writers and artists. Y’all can subscribe to the online magazine at rooted.substack.com.

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Mississippi Humanities Council (MHC)—a private nonprofit corporation funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi—has posted its April newsletter that y’all can read here. For more information, contact kam@mississippihumanitiescouncil.ccsend.com

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The Center for the Study of Southern Culture has posted its May events in its latest newsletter, which can be found below in the calendar of events.

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Here is the link to the May newsletter of the Civil Rights Movement Archive (CRMA). Also, CRMA has a new collection, What the Civil Rights Movement Taught Us, a collection of writings from various civil rights veterans, which can be viewed here. To learn more about CRMA, go here, and to read their collection of civil rights poetry, which includes six poems by C Liegh McInnis, go here.

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Here is another great article, “Our Babies,” discussing the importance of being aware of how the current times are impacting our children, by Moss Point, Mississippi, native and Princeton Professor Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr., which is posted on his platform, A Native Son. Doc Glaude’s latest book is Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own Democracy, which can be purchased here.

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Next month, Omo Moses, son of legendary Civil Rights organizer Bob Moses, will discuss his unflinching and highly-praised memoir, The White Peril, about becoming black in America that interweaves voices from three generations of the Moses family, with Harvard University Professor Dr. Imani Perry as she discusses newly published Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. The White Peril is a powerful chorus of voices that spans three generations of an African-American family, all shining a light on the black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice. The White Peril is simultaneously a coming-of-a-story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, and a searing account of the black male experience. For more information on this event, see the calendar of events below.

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The Price of Resistance, a documentary about the life of Sala Udin—an iconic Civil Rights activist, community leader, and former Pittsburgh City Councilman—is in theatres now. Featuring interviews of Dr. Robert Luckett—Director of the Jackson State University Margaret Walker Alexander Center, the film captures Udin’s powerful story through rare archival footage, personal reflections, and a compelling interview with a former FBI agent who was active in Mississippi during the Civil Rights ear. To watch the trailer, go here. Also, if you are in the Pittsburgh area, there will be a screening in May. For more information about the screening, see the calendar of events below.

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The Jackson Advocate, one of the oldest African-American newspapers, has more insightful articles, including Mississippi Senator Derrick T. Simmons’ “Confederate Memorial Day Is Racist and Bad Policy: It’s Time to End It (here)” and Dr. Ivory Phillips’ “Death of Pope Francis Leaves Many Black Catholics in Mourning and also Praying (here).” To read more of their articles, go here. Also, JA has a weekly podcast that y’all can access here and here, and to receive notifications of future episodes contact janews@thejacksonadvocate.com.

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I never get tired of super songwriter and music producer Jimmy Jam telling this great story about Prince because it explains why Prince was great and how he made others around him great. Y’all can watch Jam’s full interview on Shawn Stockman’s On That Note (here).

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Jackson, Mississippi, native, comedian, emcee, musician (wonderful drummer), and singer Rita Brent will host the next episode of her variety show, Late Night with Rita Brent (here). To watch the hilarious monologue from the first episode, go here, to watch her interview comedy veteran Ricky Smiley, go here, and to watch her interview longtime Mississippi chef and restaurant owner Godfrey Morgan, go here. To promote her new show, Brent was interviewed by longtime TV personality Walt Grayson, which y’all can watch here. For more information about Late Night with Rita Brent, see the calendar of events below. Along with being a nationally noted comedian who appears weekly on the Rickey Smiley Morning Show, her hit single, “Raised in the ‘Sipp” made waves all around the country, and y’all can watch it here. I’m digging this, and I’m not even a hip-hop head. Her previous single, “Kamala,” was all over YouTube, CNN, and just about everywhere. Y’all can vibe to “Kamala” here and the 2024 remix here. As a multitalented artist, I’ve long proclaimed that Rita B is as equally talented as a triple threat like Jamie Foxx. (Of course, no one touches Sammy Davis, Jr., as a multitalented artist, but that’s a debate for another time.) Jacktown aka Jackfrica is extremely proud of our hometown girl who always keeps us laughing and dancing while thinking. Rita B will tickle your funny bone while stimulating your mind. For those not familiar with the artistry of Rita B, I’ll leave y’all with two of my favorite works by her. The first is her song, “Can You Rock Me Like a Pothole?” The second is her routine about substitute teachers. Checkout both and go to her Website, YouTube, and Facebook page and follow her to remain current with what she’ll be doing. To be clear, since I don’t have Facebook or Twitter or any social media, I’m not sure if you follow someone on Facebook or not, but I’m sure that y’all will know what to do. But, whatever y’all do, be sure to support Rita B and all the local artists.

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John Blake has a new article, “What Happened to the Funk: How America Lost Its Groove,” which can be read here.

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Here and here are links to a fantastic new funk documentary, We Want the Funk, which was just released on PBS this week. It has a host of funk legends and scholars interviewed, including noted Prince scholar and NYU Professor De Angela Duff, music archivist, DJ, and Loyola and Tulane Professor Melissa A. Weber aka DJ Soul Sister, and noted cultural critic and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal. This is one of the best documentaries on Funk!

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Poet, editor, and Emeritus Distinguished University of Southern Mississippi Professor Dr. Philip C. Kolin has a poem, “Ellis Island,” published on page 97 of Fireflies’ Light. Additionally, Dr. John J. Han, editor of Fireflies’ Light, has written a review of Kolin’s latest collection of poetry, White Terror Black Trauma: Resistance about Black History, which appears on page 165 of the journal. Finally, literary theorist and Emeritus Dean of Graduate Studies at Missouri Baptist University Dr. C. Clark Triplett has written a review of Conversation with Lenard D. Moore, edited by Dr. John Zheng, which appears on page 151. To read these and all the poetry and essays in this issue of Fireflies’ Light, go here. To purchase a copy of Kolin’s White Terror Black Trauma: Resistance about Black History, go here, and to purchase a copy of Conversations with Lenard D. Moore, edited by Dr. John Zheng, go here.

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The Spring 2025 edition of Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine has been published with its usual excellent poetry, fiction, and essays, including two tribute commentaries to poet and literary theorist Dr. Jerry W. Ward by poet and activist Julia Wright and poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis, which y’all can read here.

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Abrasion & Erasing: Essays, Interviews, and Poems of Jerry W. Ward, Jr., edited by poet, scholar, and Mississippi Valley State University English Chair Dr. John Zheng, is available and beautiful—physically and literarily. Abrasion & Erasing is a collection of essays, interviews, and poems by Doc Ward published over the years in Valley Voices: A Literary Review and the Journal of Ethnic American Literature. Through this collection, Dr. Zheng has captured and illuminated the beauty, power, and significance of Doc Ward as one of the most important literary voices of Mississippi, the South, and America. We are extremely proud to share that poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis’ interview with Doc Ward is included, along with interviews of Doc Ward by storyteller, visual artist, and arts activist Diane Williams, and Dr. Zheng. This collection is a testament and call to action to continue the work of Doc Ward as he served skillfully as a steward of black literature, leaving a brilliant blueprint for us to follow. As an artist, scholar, and Afro-Mississippian, I thank you for this work! To purchase a copy of Abrasion & Erasing: Essays, Interviews, and Poems of Jerry W. Ward, Jr., send $10 to Valley Voices at MVSU 7242, 14000 Highway 82 West, Itta Bena, MS 38941 or valley_voices@yahoo.com.

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President Agent Orange’s attempts to create a new American Oligarchy have impacted Mississippi again. “The Mississippi Humanities Council (MHC) received notice from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that its federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has been terminated effective immediately. MHC, along with its colleagues at other state councils and the Federation of State Humanities Councils (FSHC), are looking into a possible legal response. Meanwhile, we urgently need you to contact your elected leaders in Congress and show your support for the Council’s work in Mississippi. Remind them how important the Council’s work is in our state and urge them to stop DOGE from gutting the NEH and state humanities councils. The Mississippi Humanities Council serves as the state affiliate of the NEH, and if the termination of funding to state councils is not stopped, we will lose all of the federal funding that supports our work. Please contact your senators and members of congress to urge them to support the continued funding of NEH and state humanities councils. Remind them that in 2024, with just $1 million in federal funding, the Council presented 750 programs across 90 communities and supported 65 grants to various institutions, including colleges, historical societies, museums, and community organizations. These initiatives include traveling Smithsonian exhibits, our Speakers Bureau, the Mississippi Freedom Trail, youth reading programs, and transformative prison education courses and book clubs.” Here is a link to public talking points to support MHC, here is a link to a script for contacting elected officials, and here is a link to donate directly to MHC. In closing, I’ll leave y’all with my poem, “What Good Are Poems? (here)” which I hope makes it plain why art is important to every community.

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Cultural critic and filmmaker Nelson George’s Finding the Funk is an excellent documentary despite George’s ongoing lame-ass attempt to minimize Prince from the history of funk. Luckily, the real musicians that he interviews don’t take the bait when asked about Prince and make it clear that Prince is as much of a funk musician as he is anything else. Yet, that being said, I’m clear that Finding the Funk is a great doc that y’all can watch here. Additionally, George has spent the last year or so uploading outtakes of interviews for his doc that can be seen here. There are so many highlights that I won’t do justice naming a few, but I gotta call y’all’s attention to some, namely writer and director Reggie Hudlin who manages to give a brief yet thorough history of Parliament/Funkadelic (here). Hudlin perfectly weaves history, sociopolitical context, and aesthetic theory to provide one of the best explanations of who Parliament/Funkadelic are and why they are essential. Additionally, writer, arranger, producer, and bass master Marcus Miller’s two-part interview (one and two) is a masterclass. And, writer, arranger, and producer Niles Rodgers’ three-part interview (one, two, and three) is more required viewing to understand the importance of bands and live music to black culture. Again, George, to his credit, interviewed a ton of masters for his doc, and y’all can watch many of those complete interviews and outtakes here.

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Over the past three years, filmmaker Mark Brockway has been working on a new documentary, Where We Daily Tread, which tells the story of white supremacy, the Black Power Movement, and the May 1970 attack on Jackson State by Mississippi law enforcement. He has begun uploading very brief clips of interviews for the doc, and here is the link to give y’all a “taste” of what the doc will be. Two of the clips include insights from poet, short story writer, Prince scholar, and JSU graduate C Liegh McInnis.

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As part of this summer’s Juneteenth Celebration, Afrikan Art Gallery will host a book reading and signing by Walter Simpson, Mississippi’s first black firefighter, and his book, First on the Scene: My Journey through the Fires of Bigotry in Mississippi. For more information, see the calendar of events below.

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The 2025 National Black Book Festival will be in Houston this fall. They will be celebrating their 18th anniversary and are looking forward to 2025 being their best year yet! If you’re an author, publisher, or entrepreneur interested in acquiring a vendor table at 2025 NBBF, early bird registration is now open. Registrations are starting at an unprecedented rate, and they are already at 45% capacity. As a result, it’s best to place your table deposit and register as soon as possible. For more information, see the calendar of events below.

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The group responsible for the Jackson’s Black Business Directory (Our Version of the Green Book) is contemplating updating it and need your help by identifying Black-owned businesses in and around MedgarEversville (bka Jackson). Please send the name, address, and owner of the Black-owned Businesses that you patronize to Asinia Lukata Chikuyu at afrikan_tbt@yahoo.com. They will compile the information into an updated Black Business Directory for the #HITTHEMINTHEPOCKET HARD and LONG-TERM initiative. Working together, we can make some good things happen for Jackson’s Black Community. Black Business growth and success will mean jobs, community investment, and more ops for our youth. Afrikan/Black Community Development Economics (#ABCDE) is somethang we must do. Communities around MedgarEversville are growing because those folks support their community. As Malcolm X stated, “Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don’t live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.”

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Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Organizations is now LIVE! This first-of-its-kind field study focuses on Black literary arts service organizations that provide essential programming, services, and networks of support to the literary community. These organizations have modeled resilience in the face of concentric disparities often in the absence of institutional support and recognition. To produce this research, Cave Canem and Ithaka S+R collaborated closely with a working group, composed of directors from Getting Word: Black Literature for Black Liberation, as well as two literary experts in the field, to hone the research questions and instruments that would become this study. Click here to explore the Magnitude and Bond webpage, read the full study, flip through our executive summary e-zine, and learn more about upcoming programs.

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The McMullan Writers Workshops will be held on the campus of Millsaps College this summer, featuring Pulitzer-winning author Jack Davis as the keynote speaker. Additionally, poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis will give a craft talk during the week. Registration for all three workshop cohorts — middle school, high school, and adult writers will open soon. For more information, see the calendar of events below.
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Dr. John Zheng’s interview of poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis has been published in the latest issue of African American Review (57.2). Here is the link to the page announcing their latest issue with the table of contents. To subscribe to ARR, go here. To order a copy of this issue (57.2), contact (800) 548-1784 or jrnlcirc@press.jhu.edu. AAR has featured renowned writers and cultural critics including Trudier Harris, Arnold Rampersad, Hortense Spillers, Amiri Baraka, Cyrus Cassells, Rita Dove, Charles Johnson, Cheryl Wall, Toni Morrison, and many more. The official publication of the Modern Language Association’s Division on Black American Literature and Culture, AAR fosters a vigorous conversation among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

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Poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis appeared on long-time media veteran and Prince scholar Tonya Pendleton’s WURD radio show Reality Check to read his poem, “Black Man,” and discuss the continued significance of observing and celebrating Black History Month. To watch the recording, go here and then go to the 1:41:38 mark. Feel free to leave a like or comment so that Sister P knows that y’all were there. Also, if y’all would like to read “Black Man,” go here.

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On November 21, 2024, in New Orleans, poet, fiction writer, playwright, and editor Kalamu ya Salaam was joined by poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis to discuss Salaam’s new novel, Walkin’ Blues, and their discussion was recently uploaded here.

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Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters has released its special issue documenting and celebrating the Jackson State University Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival. In 2023, the Jackson State University Margaret Walker Alexander Center curated the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the original 1973 festival, which hosted most of the major black women writers of the day. In the same vein, the 2023 festival hosted many of the major black women writers of today. Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, one of the three major African-American literary journals, has published a special proceedings issue of the 2023 JSU MWA Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival that includes scholarly essays, poetry, fiction, and artwork presented during the festival along with interviews, reflections, and photography from the festival. The Callaloo special proceedings issue documents this historic gathering of scholars and artists, including noted writers Jesmyn Ward, Alice Walker, Paula Giddings, Maryemma Graham, Imani Perry, Tiffany Caesar, Barbara Lewis, and a host of JSU professors and products—Tonea Stewart, Shanna L. Smith, Iely Mohamed, Roy Lewis, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, LaWanda Dickens, Ebony Lumumba, Kaitlyn Taylor, and C Liegh McInnis. To view the full table of contents, go here. For more information about the Callaloo Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival Special Issue, go here, and to purchase a single print or electronic issue, go here. Once y’all get to the page, scroll down to the print section or the electronic section and choose The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival 50th Anniversary: A Special Issue Vol. 42, No. 3, Summer Issue 2024. Finally, to give y’all an idea of the type of scholarship presented during the festival and included in the special issue, here is a link to C Liegh McInnis’ edited video presentation of his paper, “‘You Will Be Moved’: Exploring Black Liberation Theology in the Work of Margaret Walker Alexander and Prince.” The complete version of his paper is in the Callaloo special issue along with his poem, “My People.” Other amazing sessions at the festival include the Opening Session, which was a Tribute to the Original Participants hosted my award-winning actress and JSU graduate Tonea Stewart (here), Dr. Maryemma Graham’s keynote, Nikki Giovanni’s talk, and Sonia Sanchez’s talk. For more about Callaloo, go here.

Additionally, Jackson State University’s The Researcher: An Interdisciplinary Journal published a special issue (In Our Own Words: The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival 50th Anniversary Commemorative Issue) that y’all can read here. Y’all can also purchase a print copy of the issue here. C Liegh McInnis has a poem, “For Sappho, Margaret, Marie, and Iley (After Catherine Pierce’s Message to POL),” and an essay, “The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival as Performative Manifestation of Margaret Walker Alexander’s Literary Manifesto and Genius,” included in the issue, along with great works by scholars and poets, such as Dr. Tiffany Caesar, Alissa Rae Funderburk, Angela Stewart, Dr. Craig Meyer, Dr. Shanna Smith, Patricia Jones, Ming Joi, Barbara Brewster Lewis, and Dr. RaShell Smith-Spears. Special thanks to Dr. Candis Pizzetta, editor of The Researcher, for compiling this wonderful special issue. This commemorative issue was crafted before the actual festival as a way to promote and highlight the festival as it was occurring.

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Poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis appeared on The Eddrick Show, which is hosted by Eddrick Jerome, a talented writer and award-winning short film producer from Northern California. Jerome is also the former host of The Globe Newspaper Hour on KECG 88.1 FM - More Public Radio in Oakland, CA. (Shoutout to Alice Tisdale, Editor Emeritus of the Jackson Advocate, for McInnis and Jerome.) Brother Jerome asked if C Liegh would discuss songs in which Prince is directly addressing issues specific to the African-American community. Here and here are the YouTube and audio only versions of their discussion. We hope y’all enjoy the discussion, and, of course, feel free to let us know what y’all think.

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The Mississippi Book Festival has posted videos and photos of all the panels, conversations, and keynotes from this year’s festival. To see links to the full schedule, go here. And, here are links to just a few of the panels and conversations from this year. C Liegh McInnis was the moderator for the poetry panel, which included another stellar group of poets: Leona Sevick (The Bamboo Wife), Hannah V. Warren (Slaughterhouse for Old Wives' Tales), A.H. Jerriod Avant (Muscadine), and Adam Clay (Circle Back) and can be viewed here. Other great discussions feature award-winning novelist Jesmyn Ward (here), award-winning poet and former Mississippi Poet Laureate Beth Ann Fennelly with award-winning poet Major Jackson (here), Mississippi Poet Laurate Catherine Pierce and the Mississippi Youth Poetry Project (here), storyteller and visual artist Diane Williams on the Mississippi Culture Panel (here), best-selling and award-winning novelist Angie Thomas on the Middle Grade Dreams Panel (here), The Female Lead in Myth and Fantasy Panel (here), and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and US/MS Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey (here).

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Here is a very cool video celebrating Jackson, Mississippi, the City with Soul.

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Prince scholar and NYU Professor De Angelia Duff has uploaded all of the presentations, panels, and roundtables for the #Come30 Virtual Prince Symposium. To watch all of the events, including C Liegh McInnis’ presentation, “Part I: Come as the Introduction/EP to The Gold Experience or When Life Imitates Art and/or Art Imitates Life in the Artistic Production of Prince,” go here.

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Tougaloo College grad Dr. Howard Rambsy II aka Doc HR is the author of two excellent books, Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers and The Black Arts Enterprise and the Production of African American Poetry. He has dedicated time over the years to chronicling the work of C Liegh McInnis at his wonderful website Cultural Front, which can be read here. His latest commentary on McInnis’ work, “A Local Conscious Poet Who Knows a Lot about Prince,” can be read here.

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I am both honored and excited to have been interviewed by the brilliant Scott Woods, editor of Rock Critics.com, which features interviews with some of the most noted music journalists of the past sixty years. (This Scott Woods is not to be confused with the other brilliant Scott Woods who is a noted Prince scholar.) The title of the interview is “The Aesthetics of Prince: An Interview with C Liegh McInnis” and can be read here. It’s a very lengthy interview of my work as a Prince scholar and engages a few things that I haven’t discussed regarding my work on Prince. One of the coolest parts of the interview, for me, is that I got to shout out Prince scholar Harold Pride about midway through the interview and that I got to shout out the Polished Solid Prince Symposium and What Did Prince Do This Week? at the end of the interview. RockCritics.com is also on Twitter, which y’all know that I’m not. So, if y’all feel so inclined, locate and checkout his tweet about the interview as well. I hope y’all enjoy the interview and, as always, feel free to hit me back with your thoughts or feedback.

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The Jackson State University Creative Writing website is live and can be accessed here. Also, to give to this new program, go here. Once you are at the page, complete the amount and contact information, type “Department of English, Creative Writing,” in the “or other” box at the bottom of the form, and submit payment. And, here is a link to poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis discussing the newly established JSU Creative Writing Concentration and Minor.

The JSU creative writing offers a concentration and minor for its Bachelor of Arts program. Unlike many creative writing programs across the country, JSU’s creative writing concentration and minor will allow students to specialize in multiple genres if they desire. Additionally, unlike most creative writing programs across the country, JSU’s creative writing concentration and minor will encourage and prepare students to use their writing to engage social justice and socio-political issues by offering a capstone class that will match a student with an organization or institution that is doing the type of social justice work that the young writer desires to engage with one’s writing. This new concentration and minor were developed as a collaborative effort between Dr. Ebony Lumumba—Chair, Dr. RaShell Smith-Spears—Graduate Coordinator, and C Liegh McInnis. For more information, contact Dr. Lumumba at ebony.o.lumumba@jsums.edu or Dr. Smith-Spears at rashell.smith-spears@jsums.edu.

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Props to the Jackson State University Faculty Senate, under the leadership of Dr. Dawn Bishop, for passing the “Resolution of the Jackson State University Faculty Senate Defending Academic Freedom to Teach about Race, Gender Justice and Critical Race Theory Adopted by the Faculty Senate January 27, 2022,” which reads, in part, “THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Jackson State University Faculty Senate resolutely rejects any attempts by bodies external to the faculty to restrict or dictate university curriculum on any matter, including matters related to racial and social justice, and will stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority by the legislature or the Boards of Trustees… BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate affirms the Joint Statement on Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism, authored by the AAUP, PEN America, the American Historical Association, and the Association of American Colleges & Universities, endorsed by over seventy organizations, and issued on June 16, 2021.”

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Every Monday at 6:30 p.m., Afrikan Art Gallery & Bookstore (800 North Farish Street) will hold weekly meetings to discuss and organize around the newly published Long Term Strategic Plan for Black America. For more information contact Asinia Lukata Chikuyu at afrikan_tbt@yahoo.com.

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The first Tuesday of each month, from 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., at the Capital Club, Women for Progress of Mississippi, Inc., will host its monthly Lunch and Learn, featuring various women in impactful leadership in the city and around the country. For more information, contact mail@womenforprogress.net.

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Every Wednesday from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m., Dependable Source Corp. Center for Community & Workforce Development, which is a black woman-owned business, hosts The Working Woman Report, which is a live podcast that curates conversations on a variety of topics with professional women. Y’all can join the conversation here, and for more information contact Willie Jones, owner and CEO of Dependable Source Corp at williejones@drivingyourfuturems.com.

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Every Friday from 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m., Refill Jackson—a nonprofit designed to equip young adults ages 18 – 24 with the skills needed to enter the workforce and be self-sufficient—holds its Friday Forums, which are at 136 S. Adams Street Jackson, MS 39203. For more information, contact Nicole McNamee at nmcnamee72@gmail.com or visit their website here.

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The first Friday of each month, at 8:00 p.m. at The Event Center (716 S Gallatin Street), Spoken Soul Open Mic holds its monthly open mic readings and performances. Hosted by Queen Speaks, the cost is $10. All poets and performers welcomed. For more information, contact Erica Garrett at ericamvsu03@gmail.com or (601) 500-3502.

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The first Saturday of each month, the Mississippi Museum of Art will begin its Access for All: Free First Saturdays. For more information, go here.

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The first Saturday of each month, from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., The Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience (The MAX) will host, Earth’s Bounty at the Max, which is held the first Saturday of every month and features:

8:00 – noon: Earth’s Bounty Farmers Market + Live Music

9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Free admission to The MAX

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Art activities in upstairs classroom

To register and to learn about vending opportunities, go here.

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The second and fourth Saturday of each month, Dr. RaShell Smith-Spears (rashell.spears@jsums.edu) and Dr. Shanna Smith (shanna.l.smith@jsums.edu) coordinate a creative writing workshop that meets via Zoom. That group has been meeting for almost ten years now, and many of the works developed in that workshop have been published. In fact, I’ve had at least four works that I had workshopped by the group to be published later.

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Two Saturdays a month, Afrikan Art Gallery will host a program, Freedom School Saturdays, for middle and high school students that is modeled after the 1964 Freedom Summer/School Project. The mission is to will help with the intellectual empowerment of our children with course in Civics 101, A Meeting with the Elders: What to Expect in Life, Spiritual Pilgrimage to the Mississippi Delta, Spiritual Pilgrimage to Africatown, AL, photo-journalism exercises, cultural expressions and performances for Black-centered events through their Speech - Choir and Afrikan Cultural Pride Dance Troupe, financial literacy workshops, and so much more. For more information, contact Asinia Lukata Chikuyu at afrikan_tbt@yahoo.com.

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Every Saturday, noted Prince scholar and NYU Professor De Angela Duff is beginning another Prince project, What Did Prince Do This Week?, a very, very, very slow read of Duane Tudahl’s entire Prince Studio Sessions book series through an interactive, online, weekly book club web series. Professor Duff will be live via Streamyard video every Saturday at noon ET on YouTube and Facebook to discuss the parallel week, beginning in 1983. The weekly discussion will be recorded if y’all cannot attend the livestream. The first Saturday of the series, Duff was joined by Tudahl, and y’all can watch the recording of the first session here. To get notifications or to join Duff’s listserv, go to

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Every Sunday from 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., Afrikan Art Gallery & Bookstore (800 North Farish Street) will hold stimulating conversations, robust debates, and strategic action-step planning for an improved lifestyle for Afrikans. These meetings will be facilitated by the Coalition for Economic Empowerment, and for more information contact Jean at (769) 572-7441 and Asinia Lukata Chikuyu at afrikan_tbt@yahoo.com.

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Each Sunday at 5:00 p.m. CST, award-winning novelist Ellen Morris Prewitt, author of In the Name of Mississippi, and Alisha Johnson Perry, children’s book author, social justice advocate, and certified fundraising executive, have joined forces to establish Contemplative Writing Group. Each week is led by a member of the group. They catch up on their writing week, then the leader offers a contemplative writing prompt. They write for 30 - 40 minutes and share if anyone want. It’s come-and-go/participate when you can and of indefinite duration—as long as folks are getting something from it, the workshop will be offered. To join the group, folks can email the School of Contemplative Living at livingschool12@gmail.com or go here.

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Mississippi-based funnymen Merc B. Williams and Cocky McFly...real-life brothers…have joined forces to create The Vibe Controllers, which is a podcast that shows the two of them in their natural element discussing various topics, with a little humor and lots of sibling banter! Y’all can checkout the podcast via Soundcloud or YouTube at soundcloud.com/thevibecontrollers and The Vibe Controllers Podcast - YouTube.

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Each Sunday in March, at 1:00 p.m. C. T. Salazar—a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi—will facilitate Liberation as a Poetic Form: A Poetry Workshop for Mississippians. Nearly every decade saw a galvanized group of poets using community to turn poetic impulse into democratic exercise. Through weekly Sunday meetings in March the group will read the poetries of these poets and explore how we belong to this tradition of craft and action in Mississippi. This generative workshop will be discussion-driven, with all materials scanned for access. All experience levels are welcome. The workshop is facilitated by His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking is now available from Acre Books. He’s the author of three chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets. Salazar is also the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, RHINO, and elsewhere. Poems from the first round of workshops were published in Liberation as Poetic Form: A Poetry Zine from Mississippi. For more information about Salazar, go here and here, and to register for the workshops, go here.

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The Watering Hole hosts the only Southern writing retreat for poets of color and draws 50 to 60 poets to the retreat each year. The goal is to provide a space and resources for poets of color to develop who they are. They have released their workshop for the remainder of the year, which y’all can see here and here. For more information, visit their website here.

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The Stories of Us: A Genealogy Workshop Series Connecting Generations is a new genealogy workshop series to help descendants and community members of the Tulsa Race Massacre start tracing their roots and reconnecting the threads of their family history. The Stories of Us begins during the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, when so many will already be back home in Tulsa—remembering, reflecting, and rebuilding. These workshops will be held from May to December, and for more information, go here. These are more than workshops. It’s a step toward reclaiming what was taken and honoring those who came before us. If you have any questions, please contact Justice for Greenwood at WAG@JusticeForGreenwood.org.

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Lolwe is offering masterclasses on multiple creative writing genres and techniques through October. For more details, go here.

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Torch Literary Arts—a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women—has announced its Spring Reading Season, which can be viewed here.

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The Center for the Study of Southern Culture has posted its May events in its latest newsletter, which can be read here.

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Each Saturday through May, from 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m., at Kennedy King College, Muntu Dance Theatre will facilitate a Community Class with a certified dance instructor. To register, go here, and for more information, contact info-muntu.com@shared1.ccsend.com and go here.

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May 2 – 4, 2025, To celebrate the grand opening of its Main Street Cultural Center, The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) will hold five events the next two weekends. This weekend will feature Big Chief Pie and Queen Denise from the Monogram Hunters, blues legend Jesse Robinson, an unforgettable night of soul-stirring jazz, soul, and R&B with renowned musician eZra Brown, and a heartfelt afternoon of music and fellowship featuring the Utica Community Choir and go as follows:

May 2, 2025, from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., will kick off the grand opening weekend with an evening of great food, music, and community! Enjoy delicious bites from their new kitchen, music, and special guests Big Chief Pie and Queen Denise from the Monogram Hunters. This event is free.

May 3, 2025, from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., will be the official ribbon cutting to open the doors of the Main Street Cultural Center! This special morning event will include remarks from community leaders, a blessing of the space, a shared vision for the future, and a special performance by blues legend Jesse Robinson. This event is free but we ask that you RSVP. There will be food available for purchase.

May 3, 2025, from 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m., experience an unforgettable night of soul-stirring jazz, soul, and R&B with renowned musician eZra Brown. Gather with friends in an intimate setting to enjoy live music, handcrafted cocktails, and the rich culture that makes Utica, Mississippi, special. This is a ticketed event, and seating is limited. To purchase tickets, go here.

May 4, 2025, from noon to 4:00 p.m., close the weekend with a heartfelt afternoon of music and fellowship featuring the Utica Community Choir. Savor a soul-filled Sunday dinner as powerful gospel harmonies uplift and inspire in the spirit of celebration. This is a free event, but there will be food for purchase.

Sipp Culture weaves research, development, and local agriculture with contemporary media and storytelling to promote the legacy and vision of Utica, Mississippi, and the possibility of what all of Mississippi can be. Their place-based model program promotes economic empowerment and self-sufficiency of low- and moderate-income people through education, technical assistance, training, and mentoring in agribusiness. The Main Street Cultural Center will provide a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and an intimate venue for presenting music, film, and multidisciplinary performance and visual art. It will also serve as Sipp Culture’s primary presenting venue for year-round arts programming. For more information about each of these events and the work of Sipp Culture, contact info@sippculture.com.

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May 2 – 4, 2025, The National Baseball Poetry Festival, the first festival to unite sports and the fine arts, is set to return to Worcester, MA. The Festival, a celebration of baseball-inspired poetry and literature, will feature live readings, performances, and a variety of engaging events at Polar Park, home of the Worcester Red Sox. In addition, the Festival is hosting two national poetry contests that are free to enter: one for youth in grades 4-12 and another for adults aged 18+. These contests offer an opportunity for poets of all ages to showcase their baseball-themed creativity. The Festival will highlight the deep connection between baseball and the arts, recognizing the wide-reaching influence that the sport has had on the fine arts, including film, theater, music, literature, opera and, especially, poetry. Among the featured poets at this year’s Festival is D.C.-based Ethelbert Miller, widely regarded as the most prominent baseball poet in the country. For more information, go here.

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May 3, 2025, from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., The Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience (The MAX) will host, Earth’s Bounty at the Max, which is held the first Saturday of every month and features:

8:00 – noon: Earth’s Bounty Farmers Market + Live Music

9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Free admission to The MAX

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Art activities in upstairs classroom

To register and to learn about vending opportunities, go here.

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May 3, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. CST at the Southside Shopping Center in Greenville, MS, The Delta Book Festival would hold its annual May Fest, which will include authors, vendors, food, music, and more. For complete details, text Mary Hard at (662) 820-5047 or email Asinia Lukata Chikuyu at afrikan_tbt@yahoo.com.

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May 4, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. EST, Jacar Press will curate a free online reading and workshop by Dasan Ahanu, the winner of last year’s Unsung Poet’s Award, and Chisom Okafor, winner of the New Voices Award. Both selected by award-winning and former North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green. Each poet will give a short reading from their work and facilitate a prompt, and those who attend will be invited to share what they wrote. Dasan’s prompt will be based around a poem by award-winning poet Patricia Smith, and Chisom’s prompt springboards from a poem by award-winning Sudanese poet Safia Elhillo. Poems will be sent ahead of time for all who register by emailing jacarpress@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

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May 9, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. at JustBook-ish, Omo Moses, son of legendary Civil Rights organizer Bob Moses, will discuss his unflinching and highly-praised memoir, The White Peril, about becoming black in America that interweaves voices from three generations of the Moses family, with Harvard University Professor Dr. Imani Perry as she discusses newly published Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. The White Peril is a powerful chorus of voices that spans three generations of an African-American family, all shining a light on the black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice. The White Peril is simultaneously a coming-of-a-story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, and a searing account of the black male experience. For more information on this event, go here.

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May 10, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. in the Community Room of the Ridgeland Library, the Mississippi Writers Guild (MWG) will meet and feature a talk by Julie Whitehead, who lives and writes from Mississippi. An award-winning freelance writer, Whitehead covered disasters from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina throughout her career. She writes on mental health, mental health education, and mental health advocacy. For more information, contact MWG Director Susan Marquez at susanmarquez39110@gmail.com.

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May 10, 2025, To celebrate the grand opening of its Main Street Cultural Center, The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) will feature internationally acclaimed poet and performer Sunni Patterson with her band at the Main Street Cultural Center. Patterson has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TEDWomen, featured on Grammy award-winning Hip-Hop albums, and currently serves as a Resident Artist for both the City of New Orleans’ Claiborne Corridor Cultural Initiative and Junebug Productions. Sipp Culture weaves research, development, and local agriculture with contemporary media and storytelling to promote the legacy and vision of Utica, Mississippi, and the possibility of what all of Mississippi can be. Their place-based model program promotes economic empowerment and self-sufficiency of low- and moderate-income people through education, technical assistance, training, and mentoring in agribusiness. The Main Street Cultural Center will provide a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and an intimate venue for presenting music, film, and multidisciplinary performance and visual art. It will also serve as Sipp Culture’s primary presenting venue for year-round arts programming.​ For more information about each of these events and the work of Sipp Culture, contact info@sippculture.com.

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May 10, 2025, at 5:00 p.m., inspired by the current exhibition Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, the Mississippi Museum of Art invites you to a special community dialogue featuring artists, activists, and archivists impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic—What Is Remembered Lives: Mississippi and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Speakers will include Jackson-born contemporary photographer D’Angelo Lovell Williams and Co-Executive Director of the Invisible Histories Project, Joshua Burford. Williams is a Black, HIV-positive artist expanding narratives of Black and queer intimacy through photography. Invisible Histories locates, collects, researches, and creates community-based, educational programming around LGBTQ history in the Deep South. In conjunction with this event, MMA is proud to honor the tradition of quilting as both a form of remembrance and resistance by highlighting a square of Jackson’s contribution to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which will be on temporary display starting May 5th for a two-week period at the Museum. This event is free and open to the public and will offer opportunities for the public to commemorate loved ones they have lost to AIDS through a pop-up art-making opportunity where visitors can construct their own quilt square. For more information, see the calendar of events below. For more information, go here.

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May 13, 2025, 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. EST, Alternate ROOTS—an organization based in the Southern USA whose mission is to support the creation and presentation of original art, in all its forms, which is rooted in a particular community of place, tradition or spirit—will host an online workshop series–Best Practices for Preserving Histories of Community-based Art Organizations–led by their archival partners at Amistad Research Center in New Orleans. As a coalition of cultural workers, Alternate ROOTs strives to be allies in the elimination of all forms of oppression. ROOTS is committed to social and economic justice and the protection of the natural world and addresses the concerns through its program and services. For more information and to register, go here.

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May 14, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. on the Jackson State University Plaza, the JSU Margaret Walker Alexander Center will host the 55th Gibbs-Green Commemoration to memorialize the 1970 attack on JSU by the Jackson Police Department, the Mississippi Highway Patrol, and the Mississippi National Guard, which took the lives of Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, a twenty-one-year-old JSU student, and James Earl Green, a seventeen-year-old Jim Hill High School Student along with wounding eighteen others as law enforcement fired over four hundred rounds into Alexander Hall, a female Dorm. Here is a link to C Liegh McInnis’ article, “The Jackson State University Assassination: What Does It Continue to Mean in the Annals of Time?,” that was published twenty-five years ago on the Thirtieth Commemoration of the attack, and here is a link to C Liegh’s poem, “Tree of Life (Black Colleges Be Here),” that addresses the attack and the general struggles and successes of HBCUs. Additionally, everyone should purchase a copy of Dr. Nancy Bristow’s Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College, and here is the link to C Liegh and Dr. Bristow’s interview about her book at the Mississippi Book Festival. For more information, see the calendar of events below. For more information, go here or contact Dr. Robert Luckett at robert.luckett@jsums.edu.

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Alternate ROOTS is thrilled to open its newest funding program, Advancing Well-Being in the Arts, which exists to promote economic and cultural justice. Through unrestricted funds, it robustly supports artists, culture bearers, and organizations that serve and reflect communities of the global majority. Like all Alternate Roots funding programs, it is only available to ROOTS members. The deadline to apply is 5:00 p.m., May 15, 2025. For more information on how to join and apply, go here.

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May 17, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. at Elsie H. Hillman Auditorium at the Kaufmann Center, there will be a screening of The Price of Resistance, a documentary about the life of Sala Udin—an iconic Civil Rights activist, community leader, and former Pittsburgh City Councilman. Featuring interviews of Dr. Robert Luckett—Director of the Jackson State University Margaret Walker Alexander Center, the film captures Udin’s powerful story through rare archival footage, personal reflections, and a compelling interview with a former FBI agent who was active in Mississippi during the Civil Rights ear. To watch the trailer, go here. To register for the screen, go here.

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May 23 and 24, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at Duling Hall, Jackson, Mississippi, native, comedian, emcee, musician (wonderful drummer), and singer Rita Brent will host the next episode of her variety show, Late Night with Rita Brent (here). To watch the hilarious monologue from the first episode, go here, to watch her interview comedy veteran Ricky Smiley, go here, and to watch her interview longtime Mississippi chef and restaurant owner Godfrey Morgan, go here. To promote her new show, Brent was interviewed by longtime TV personality Walt Grayson, which y’all can watch here. For more information about Late Night with Rita Brent, see the calendar of events below. Along with being a nationally noted comedian who appears weekly on the Rickey Smiley Morning Show, her hit single, “Raised in the ‘Sipp” made waves all around the country, and y’all can watch it here. I’m digging this, and I’m not even a hip-hop head. Her previous single, “Kamala,” was all over YouTube, CNN, and just about everywhere. Y’all can vibe to “Kamala” here and the 2024 remix here. As a multitalented artist, I’ve long proclaimed that Rita B is as equally talented as a triple threat like Jamie Foxx. (Of course, no one touches Sammy Davis, Jr., as a multitalented artist, but that’s a debate for another time.) Jacktown aka Jackfrica is extremely proud of our hometown girl who always keeps us laughing and dancing while thinking. Rita B will tickle your funny bone while stimulating your mind. For those not familiar with the artistry of Rita B, I’ll leave y’all with two of my favorite works by her. The first is her song, “Can You Rock Me Like a Pothole?” The second is her routine about substitute teachers. Checkout both and go to her Website, YouTube, and Facebook page and follow her to remain current with what she’ll be doing. To be clear, since I don’t have Facebook or Twitter or any social media, I’m not sure if you follow someone on Facebook or not, but I’m sure that y’all will know what to do. But, whatever y’all do, be sure to support Rita B and all the local artists.

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The 2025 National Black Book Festival will be in Houston this fall. They will be celebrating their 18th anniversary and are looking forward to 2025 being their best year yet! If you’re an author, publisher, or entrepreneur interested in acquiring a vendor table at 2025 NBBF, early bird registration is now open. Registrations are starting at an unprecedented rate, and they are already at 45% capacity. As a result, it’s best to place your table deposit and register as soon as possible. The deadline for registration is May 31, 2025. For more information, go here and to register, go here.

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June 2 – 14, 2025, Mississippi native, fiction writer, playwright, and health activist Katrina Byrd is offering a new, two-week class, One-on One-Writing Coaching with Katrina Byrd to help writers and those thinking about writing to build writing skills, share writing strategies, and help writers find their voice. Package includes initial interview work plan for your project, four coaching sessions, weekly feedback, two virtual work spaces, asynchronous encouragement and support, and an exit interview for a total price of $875. To register, go here and here.

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June 9 – 13, 2025, The McMullan Writers Workshops will be held on the campus of Millsaps College this summer, featuring Pulitzer-winning author Jack Davis as the keynote speaker. Additionally, poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar C Liegh McInnis will give a craft talk during the week. Registration for all three workshop cohorts — middle school, high school, and adult writers will open soon. For more information, go here.

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June 14, 2025, in Columbus, Mississippi, at the University of Mississippi for Women, the Board of Governors of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) will hold the 46th Annual Award Gala. MIAL has announced the following awardees: John F. Marszalek is the 2025 Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award, Thad Lee is the 2025 Special Achievement Award Recipient, and Erin Austen Abbot is the 2025 Citation of Merit. For details about MIAL’s special award recipients, visit the Winners tab on their website. And, for a complete list of all 2025 nominees, visit the Nominations tab on their website. Thank you to all MIAL members who made nominations. For more information, go here.

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Are you a Mississippi higher education faculty member interested in using digital archiving and the digital humanities research texts and timelines to more effectively, preserve historical and cultural resources, or help students see the subjects you are teaching more clearly? Then join Mississippi Digital Humanities Hub at The University of Southern Mississippi for an expense-paid workshop June 16 – 27, 2025! This free two-week summer residency will be held on the Hattiesburg campus. Workshops will be taught by scholars at the Center for Digital Humanities at Southern Miss and invited experts. These sessions will introduce the basics of collecting and preserving materials (digitization) and the best and least expensive ways to make materials available and understandable using the tools and techniques of the digital humanities. Participants will have the opportunity to get hands-on experience with digital humanities tools that make it easy to collect, analyze, visualize, and map data. A tentative schedule is available on the Hub’s website at www.ms-digital-hub.com/workshop-schedule. Through the support of the National Archives and Records Administration, instructors at Mississippi colleges, universities, and community colleges can attend at no cost, housing and meals are provided, travel costs are reimbursed, and there will be a small stipend. Feel free to share this invitation about the workshop with your colleagues. If we can be a resource to you now or in the future, contact Andrew P. Haley—Associate Professor and Director of the Mississippi Digital Humanities Hub—at Andrew.Haley@usm.edu or (601) 266-4558.

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June 21, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., as part of this summer’s Juneteenth Celebration, Afrikan Art Gallery will host a book reading and signing by Walter Simpson, Mississippi’s first black firefighter, and his book, First on the Scene: My Journey through the Fires of Bigotry in Mississippi. For more information, contact Asinia Lukata Chikuyu at afrikan_tbt@yahoo.com, Walter Simpson at (901) 314-7356, or Brother Eddie at (601) 940-2540.

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ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature has announced a CALL FOR PAPERS for a special issue on “Ambivalent Realisms in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African and Black Diasporic Writing.” Black literature, across a multitude of geographies and temporalities, has been called upon to represent the “real” – the real lived experience of Black peoples, often under subjugation, in its sorrow and joy– and there has been an expectation that Black writing (from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas) adhere to a realist representation of Black struggle. However, there have always been experimental writers who pushed back against realism’s limits, and this turn away from (or looking beyond) realism has endured into the twenty-first century. ARIEL seeks to engage with the questions of what lies between realism, magical realism, and surrealism – how we might rethink authors’ complex relationships to realism and what concepts we might use to describe the results. They invite literary scholars to draw from a wide-ranging theoretical lens that might bring together studies of formal realism or the history of the novel with anticolonial theory or literary and cultural studies of Africa and its diasporas. Labels like “realism” and “modernism” do not quite capture the syncretic work colonized authors perform because these authors inherited colonial forms and deployed them in the service of independence movements. Similarly, the term “magical realism” can be limiting because of its focus on magic: African and Black diasporic authors disrupt realism in myriad ways that include and do not include the magical. Whether their work is classified as surreal or Afro-surreal, or something else entirely, these authors contend with histories and traumas that exceed realist representation. The deadline to submit is June 30, 2025. For more information and to submit, go here.

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Narrative 4 is an organization of creatives that uses storytelling to build community and civic engagement. They have partnered with National Schools Network to curate a national initiative aimed at overcoming the loneliness epidemic by fostering greater social connections between schools. The N4NSN is a community of select schools from across the United States, committed to experiential learning, intentional community, and supporting students and educators through storytelling and the arts. Twice a year, a new group of schools will be admitted to the N4NSN, committing to a 3-month program where they will experience and receive training to facilitate Story Exchanges, participate in an array of community workshops, and utilize Narrative 4 tools and resources in their classrooms. The deadline to apply is July 31, 2025. To apply to participate in these series, go here.

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October 23 – 25, 2025, the 2025 National Black Book Festival will be in Houston this fall. They will be celebrating their 18th anniversary and are looking forward to 2025 being their best year yet! If you’re an author, publisher, or entrepreneur interested in acquiring a vendor table at 2025 NBBF, early bird registration is now open. Registrations are starting at an unprecedented rate, and they are already at 45% capacity. As a result, it’s best to place your table deposit and register as soon as possible. For more information, go here and to register, go here.

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