The First Slave To Read And Write

I Want To Get Into The Educational Dna Of American Culture. I Want 10 Percent Of The Common Culture, More Or Less, To Be Black.

My Father Lived To Be 97 And Played Bridge Every Day Up To The End, So I've Got A 50 Percent Chance Of Living A Long Life Like Him.

What Happened In The Interim Is, Billions Of Records Have Been Digitized. Historians And Scholars Have Always Used Genealogical Records To Tell The Story Of American History. It Takes Months And Years Of Research. I Can't Even Tell You How Laborious That Is. You Have To Be Somebody Who Has A Lot Of Free Time, Like A Professor Who Can Take Tenure Or Someone With A Great Deal Of Leisure.

The Only People Who Live In A Post-black World Are Four People Who Live In A Little White House On Pennsylvania Avenue. The Idea That America Is Post-racial Or Post-black Because A Man I Admire, Barack Obama, Is President Of The United States, Is A Joke. And I Hope No One Will Even Wonder About This Crazy Fiction Again.

I Think That Is What We Do By Preserving And Telling Our Stories. If You Don't Tell Your Stories, Other People Will Tell Their Story About You. It's Important That We Nurture And Protect These Memories. Things Change. Existence Means Change. So, The Kind Of Precious Memories About Being Black For My Generation Won't Exist For My Kids' And Grandkids' Generations Unless We Preserve Them Through Fiction, Through Film, Through Comic Books, And Every Other Form Of Media We Can Possibly Utilize To Perpetuate The Story Of The Great African-american People.