Mark Neal

1 month ago | levelman.com | Mark Neal

"He almost had me convinced that I was made up of brown sugar," Qubilah Shabazz recalls of her father adding, "Every morning, he'd take my finger and stir his coffee with my finger...he said it was to sweeten it up." Was she talking about Malcolm X, the same Malcolm X who put white racists on notice with the rallying cry "by any means necessary"?

2 months ago | levelman.com | Mark Neal

In far too many minds, Jackie Robinson - a legitimate national hero - is the direct antithesis of contemporary professional sports figures. Whether they are discussed on Sports radio broadcasts or hosting their own podcasts, contemporary athletes - in this era of athlete empowerment - are invariably described as selfish, money hungry, and inaccessible. While such descriptions are used to depict many professional athletes, when applied to Black athletes, it takes on added animus.

Mar 29, 2025 | levelman.com | Mark Anthony Neal |Mark Neal

In his classic study, psychologist Richard Majors (with Janet Mancini Billson) writes, "Cool Pose is a distinctive coping mechanism that serves to counter, at least in part, the dangers that black males encounter on a daily basis." As Majors notes "Cool pose...exacts a stiff price in repressed feelings and suppressed energy." There is, perhaps, no better example of the stakes of "keeping cool" than the case of Nat King Cole, who at the pinnacle of his career in the 1950s was a most visible...

Feb 14, 2025 | levelman.com | Mark Neal

When The Edwin Hawkins singers logged a major crossover hit with " Oh Happy Day" in 1969, they could point to artists like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke, as well as Mahalia Jackson's historic appearance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, as laying the groundwork for their success.

Dec 11, 2024 | levelman.com | Mark Neal

Truth is On Its Way is just a reminder of how evident Giovanni's vision and genius was, from the very beginning "The church is a great archive of Black music." - Nikki Giovanni Amiri Baraka once wrote that Black music, "to retain its freshness, its originality, its specific expression of its own history and contemporary reality in each generation creates a 'new music'." This was yet another articulation of what Baraka once called the "changing same" - the thing that links Black expressive...