Billy Preston’s Music Was ‘Pure Joy.’ But His Life Ended in Tragedy. The Beatles’ beloved collaborator died at 59 in 2006. A new documentary, “That’s the Way God Planned It,” explores what he long kept hidden. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/a... #BlackHistoryMonth

Hemingway was once bet that he couldn’t write the world’s happiest short story in just 5 words. He replied,

Happy Birthday to both Toni Morrison & Audre Lorde! They changed not just American literature.. Lorde is still influencing German literature through the Afrodeutsch Movement. thecrimsonwhite.com/50928/cultur...

An interesting experiment. Wouldn’t real communication between sentient beings, though, be used in a mode of communication we wouldn’t grasp? So whether the bots are sentient, simply regurgitating nonsense or somewhere inbetween, regardless, Moltbook is still all purely (for us) performative.

At last I can talk about it! I'm writing a Star Trek comic!!!! All I can tell you right now is it takes place several years after the end of Picard. And it stars Captain Raffi Musiker working with a giant positronic brain to protect the Federation from future threats! gizmodo.com/star-trek-id...

The San Francisco Public Library picked my first novel, The Survivalists (Black lawyer falls in with some Black brooklynite doomsday preppers) as their Jan/Feb ‘26 On The Same Page pick, so I’ll be talking about it at the main SF library this Sunday 2/22 at 3 pm. Come through!

My book, Protest and Pedagogy: Charlottesville's Black Freedom Struggle and the Making of the American High School, will be published soon. To learn more about it, see the attached flyer. To pre-order the book, go here: www.ugapress.org/978082037530... #histed #edhist #history @ugapress.bsky.social

Glad to see Vollmann win it. Also glad to hear he’s still at it. Need to start checking for him again.

Companion site to my upcoming book: This digital poster tracks the way Black literary movements and Black little magazines influenced canon development, as represented in the Norton Anthology of Am Lit. #DH #digitalhumanities #BlackStudies #Periodicals and #Modernism. blackmodernism.com

The dutiful reportorial "His death was ruled a suicide" is beginning to sound increasingly more absurd and ironic.

Reverend Jesse Jackson is an ancestor now. The titans we studied in our history books are gone and we’re all we have left. We’re called to fight, but we’re also called to hope. We’re our only hope. Rest well, Reverend Jackson, and we’ll see you in the morning.

"[Toni] Morrison, I think, does this to people who care enough to burrow into the text: exhilarate their intellect." -- Wesley Morris via @nytimes.com

RIP Jesse Jackson (Jacob Lawrence's portrait of Jesse Jackson, created in 1970 for cover of Time magazine, now in collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery) npg.si.edu/object/npg_N...

I grew up with Jesse Jackson as one of the great giant Civil Rights Leaders of our era. This life in pictures is great. We need a whole book. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

I show this in almost every single class I teach to demonstrate the simple values behind the dignity of all people and how at odds our culture's norms are to the idea. I have cried over how hard it is to believe myself when I repeat after Rev. Jackson, "even if I make a mistake, I am somebody." RIP.

Kimberlé Crenshaw did me the honor of meeting with my class today and I sure hope my students understand they met with a legend. She was so gracious and erudite. Just an all around delight.

Interesting LitHub Map of important Black landmarks in New York City: lithub.com/explore-blac...

quick research jot might delete later: Early American publishing discourse seems similar in its chaotic freewheeling whimsy to the publishing discourse today, if we consider blogs, social media, and all other literary discourse, literature. Also questions boundaries between oral/literary cultures.

In a world where The Cure can win their first Grammys on the same night they’re literally at a funeral, that’s the sort of irony and comedy that to me feels like hope. pls read, subscribe & share johnfugelsang.substack.com/p/suspicious...

I’m late to learning about this journal. Thanks for the post. It looks fascinating!

'It underscores something Murdoch said in an interview, that "poets can express much more than novelists, this connected sense of something which is simple and lucid and true and non-bogus and at the same time oddly accidental."' Who am I to argue with Iris Murdoch? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/b...

Sun Ra was also a formidable poet, whose poetry operated according to what he called the “immeasurable equation.” That probably explains the bizarre sermon that sparked Lowenthal’s interest. Ra would say the poetry had done its work!

Still love "Exile's Return." Indispensable!

UK edition of the novel by @oluterry.bsky.social (Olufemi Terry) "Wilderness of Mirrors" comes out in a month. US edition is available now. Grab it. I can highly recommend it. www.lesfugitives.com/the-quick-br...

Friends: @moderniststudies.bsky.social and @sharpweb.org are teaming up for a non-guaranteed panel on “Modernism in Ephemeral Print” at MLA 2027, in LA. Consider submitting!

Trump's approval ratings are low so... they're going to stop reporting his approval rating. Can't make this complict shit up any more.

Recently finished an indispensable work for any 21st century historian. Hardly a comprehensive study, it will hopefully open channels towards redefining "classicism" the way Bad Bunny's recent performance redefines Americanism. www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/afri...

having your city noticed by the president is now a natural disaster on par with a hurricane or major flood

Yep, Bad Bunny offers a positive vision for a better America in dark times!

BOOK NEWS The role of African and Caribbean newspapers in shaping Black political thought Recent release from @harvardpress.bsky.social journalofmodernliterature.blogspot.com/2026/02/book... #BlackHistoryMonth #AcademicSky

Great to hear. Thanks for posting this link; definitely using this performance in my "Introduction to American Studies" seminar next semester.

Bad Bunny has a consulting historian. news.wisc.edu/pop-star-bad...

Word. Bad Bunny provided a positive vision for a possible future America, a unified, truly multicultural America. A very Latin-Afro-Americanfuturism!

Bad Bunny understood the assignment…

Pin post of my book with cover! It comes out in 3 months, so I guess I need to start building my promotion! The book offers a new reading of Imagism, the Harlem Renaissance & the Black Arts Movements -- and the dialogue these movements are having with each other. www.umasspress.com/978162534950...

Great news! My first academic book, "The Image and the Fire" is now available for pre-order through UMass Press (to appear in May of next year). www.umasspress.com/978162534950...

Here's in honor to the life, work and legacy of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, whose visionary novel "Wizard of the Crow" informed my own novel "Robert Johnson's Freewheeling Jazz Funeral," and whose study "Decolonising the Mind" certainly informs all of my academic work. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/b...

New Issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies is now live. I have an article in it about Du Bois and Higher Education -- an important read in these troubled times where the future of HBCUs is in danger of Trump's recent attempt to take control of them. amst.winter-verlag.de/article/AMST...

Despair in Gaza as Israeli aid blockade creates crisis ‘unmatched in severity’ Palestinians pushed into new misery as supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out in seven-week siege www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

"We can react by seeing all of this for what it is, and naming it by name: incipient state terror. We can react by associating ourselves with others who are repressed before we are. Only in solidarity do we affirm law."

1/4. On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.

If the U.S. government is going to take the position that, once removed from the United States, folks can’t be brought back, then it sure seems to me that federal courts should be reflexively and categorically barring *all* removals until they’re 100 percent certain that the removals are lawful.

Bring back *everyone* who was sent from the U.S. to CECOT in El Salvador. *No one* should be sent there. ALL their rights were violated. ALL of them should come home.

I piece I wrote on W.E.B. Du Bois and classical education based on a talk he gave at my alma mater (a western classics type of school), which was just published by American Studies / Amerikastudien: amst.winter-verlag.de/article/AMST...

Standing in solidarity.. picture is from March 2022 (Freiburg, Germany) but definitely worth a repost now.

Really heartened to hear this is happening and to see the Guardian is covering it. Hopefully a lot of other outlets are as well. Washington DC we need you out there demonstrating too if you ain’t already!: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Kudos to @jpalfrey.bsky.social and the MacArthur Foundation for stepping up at this critical moment. Increasing foundation giving to fill the gap left by the broken promises and breached contracts of federal funding shows true leadership and compassion. #belovedcommunity apnews.com/article/maca...

New J Cole song “cLOUDs” is hot! Definitely (as always with J Cole) worth giving the lyrics a listen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUsQ...

Hearing lots of great things about this movie, but hesitant to see another Black trauma film. I have read the book, which was powerful and important, if not my favorite of Whitehead’s books, but curious what folks who have seen (and read) it thought.

Sounds like it could be an article about Europe and America…