index

"The backdrop of my poetry comes from the 1970's. After the 1965 Watts Riot seven
years later there was a concert that was held in Los Angeles, CA called Wattstax.
Over 100,000 were in attendance to witness this display of Black Pride at its best. I
had the wonderful opportunity of growing up in the seventies when men referred to
women as Queens and women referred to men as Kings. That is the sole basis of my
poetry to remember how it was and how it should be".
-Brother Hypnotic

Blacknificent Achievements

Malcolm X (On June 29, 1963 Malcolm lead the Unity Rally in Harlem. It was one of the nations largest civil rights events), Martin
Luther King Jr (leader during the Civil Rights Movement who encouraged minorities to stand up for their rights. His words still ring
true today as they continue to inspire people of all races and creeds), Magic Johnson (Ervin "Magic" Johnson won five NBA
championships during the 80's with the Los Angeles Lakers), Barack Obama (became president in 2008 and was re-elected in
2012), Spike Lee (African American director of Do the right thing and Jungle Fever his unique camera angles changed movie making
forever), James Weldon Johnson (wrote the Black National Anthem), Michael Jackson (greatest entertainer of all time), Tiger Woods
(Eldrick Tont " Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him
among the most successful golfers of all time), Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson, June 7, 1958) is a singer, songwriter, musician,
and actor. He has been known under the unpronounceable symbol ), Tyra Banks (First black woman to grace the cover of Sports
Illustrated) Vanessa Williams (First black Miss America) Aretha Franklin (First black woman in the rock n' roll Hall of Fame) Michelle
Obama (First black First Lady) Bob Marley (Bob Marley was a hero figure, in the classic mythological sense. His departure from this
planet came at a point when his vision of One World, One Love -- inspired by his belief in Rastafari -- was beginning to be heard and
felt. The last Bob Marley and the Wailers tour in 1980 attracted the largest audiences at that time for any musical act in Europe),
Earth, Wind and Fire (During the 1970s, a new brand of pop music was born - one that was steeped in African and African-American
styles - particularly jazz and R&B but appealed to a broader cross-section of the listening public. As founder and leader of the band
Earth, Wind & Fire, Maurice White not only embraced but also helped bring about this evolution of pop, which bridged the gap that
has often separated the musical tastes of black and white America. It certainly was successful, as EWF combined high-caliber
musicianship, wide-ranging musical genre eclecticism, and '70s multicultural spiritualism. "I wanted to do something that hadn't
been done before," Maurice explains. "Although we were basically jazz musicians, we played soul, funk, gospel, blues, jazz, rock
and dance music...which somehow ended up becoming pop. We were coming out of a decade of experimentation, mind expansion
and cosmic awareness. I wanted our music to convey messages of universal love and harmony without force-feeding listeners'
spiritual content."), Stevie Wonder (A brilliant song singers and one of the most influential singers of all time. Wrote and performed
the song “Happy Birthday” which is a dedication to Martin Luther King Jr. and was instrumental in helping Dr. King’s birthday
become a national holiday), India Arie (Wonderful song writer and singer and was heavily influenced and inspired by Stevie Wonder),
Oprah (Undisputed queen of day time talk show TV), Chuck D of PUBLIC ENEMY, Venus Williams (Wimbledon Champion 00, 01, 05,
07, 4 goal metals and seven Grand Slams), Serena Williams (31 Grand Slam titles and has won in all four grand slams. ESPY Female
Athlete of the year.) Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers. His
mother, Mallie Robinson, single-handedly raised Jackie and her four other children. They were the only black family on their block,
and the prejudice they encountered only strengthened their bond. In 1947, Jackie Robinson engineered the integration of
professional sports in America by breaking the color barrier in baseball), Thurgood Marshall (The first black member of the US.
Supreme Court), Alex Haley (JAN. 23-30 1977-The ABC-TV dramatization of ROOTS becomes the highest rated drama in TV history
and sparks a national "roots" craze), Rosa Parks (In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress, had no idea she was
changing history when, fed up and tired, she refused to surrender her seat on a bus), Ralph J. Bunche (First black to win the Nobel
Prize), Chuck Berry (Chuck Berry's music has transcended generations. He earns respect to this day because he is truly an
entertainer. Berry, also known as "The Father of Rock & Roll", gained success by watching the audience's reaction and playing
accordingly, putting his listeners' amusement above all else. For this reason, tunes like "Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene" and
"Memphis" have become anthems to an integrated American youth and popular culture. Berry is a musical icon who established
rock and roll as a musical form and brought the worlds of black and white together in song), L. Douglas Wilder (of Virginia becomes
the first black elected Governor) Billie Holliday (Is considered by many to be the best jazz singer of all time) Harriet Tubman
(conductor of the underground railroad) Madame C.J. Walker-1867-1919 (America's first black millionaire businesswoman and a
great philanthroist) Booker T. Washington-1856-1915 (first black American on a stamp) Bessie Coleman-1896-1926 (First Afican
American female to receive a pilot's license) Doug Williams (first black quarterback to win the SUPER BOWL and MVP honors) John
Singleton (African american director of Boyz n da Hood), Willie Mayes (Mays started his baseball career as a teenager with the
Negro American League champion Birmingham Black Barons in 1948), Huey P. Newton (leader of the BLACK PANTHERS) Jill Scott
(poet, song writer and songstress), Angie Stone (a soulful singer who is deep into her Black Heritage), Ice Cube (the god father of
gangster rap and is now a great comedic actor), Queen Latifah (rapper, singer and actress and the face of cover girl make up),
Beverly Johnson (the first black woman to grace the cover of American Vogue magazine. Later in her career she appeared on over
500 magazine covers). Morrie Turner (Created the "Wee Pals" comic strip in 1964. Appearing first in Ebony and Black World
magazines, it soon became the first comic strip featuring a multi-ethnic cast of characters to appear in metropolitan newspapers.

QUOTES
"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom
Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what
he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under
the sun to acquire . . . Or preserve his freedom."
-Malcolm X

"We all go through life and we wonder what our purpose is. The bible says to be fruitful and populate the earth. Then you have ones
that change the world forever and leave their mark in history. I have been encompassed with the ability to write and make a person
look within to find something that has been hibernating. I have prayed about it and I want to walk in the foot steps of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Barack Obama, Chuck D, Michael Jackson and Spike Lee. I want my words to be felt from the West
Indies to East of the equator. I want to leave a permanent stain in the brain of many and everyone. If I offend you then you don’t
understand me but if I inspire you then you will learn to love me."
-Brother Hypnotic

"I’m not going to lie and act like I always thought all hip hop or rap was the world’s greatest thing but PUBLIC ENEMY made me
realize that all rap is not the same. They made the world listen; they articulated the frustrations and anger of the black community.
More importantly they changed the perception of what hip hop could be. Chuck D said that rap was the CNN of the black community
and no one broadcast louder than PUBLIC ENEMY."
-Reverend Al Sharpton

"ROSA PARKS SAT SO MARTIN LUTHER KING COULD WALK...MARTIN LUTHER KING WALKED SO BARACK OBAMA COULD RUN....
BARACK OBAMA RAN SO WE ALL CAN FLY!"
-On the front of an Obama T-shirt

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"Maybe if we were still slaves we would be closer but however, picking cotton was bad but we picked it together."
-Heavy D

"Before we can see, we feel and before we can see, we hear."
-Stevie Wonder (Live on Larry King 2010)

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games, 26 times, I’ve been trusted to
take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is
why I succeed.”
-Michael Jordan

SPEECH
I HAVE A DREAM
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let
freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let
freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only
that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring
from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow
freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up
that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

SONGS
LIFT EV'RY VOICE AND SING Also known as "The Black National Anthem" by James Weldon Johnson
Lift ev'ry voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring. Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise, High as the list'ning
skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope
that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won. Stony the road we
trod, Bitter the chast'ning rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet, Come to
the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our
path through the blood of the slaughtered, Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our bright
star is cast. God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy
might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee, Shadowed beneath thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our
God, True to our native land.

HISTORY
Watts Riot
With the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, race relations seemed to be headed in the right direction. However, states acted to
circumvent the new federal law, including California that created Proposition 14, which moved to block the fair housing section of
the Act. This created anger and a feeling of injustice within the inner cities. On August 11, 1965, Los Angeles's South Central
neighborhood of Watts became a scene of the greatest example of racial tension America had seen. August 13-16, 1965, the
blacks of Los Angeles revolted. An incident between traffic police and pedestrians developed into two days of spontaneous riots.
Despite increasing reinforcements, the forces of order were unable to regain control of the streets. By the third day the blacks had
armed themselves by looting accessible gun stores, enabling them to fire even on police helicopters. It took thousands of police
and soldiers, including an entire infantry division supported by tanks, to confine the riot to the Watts area, and several more days
of street fighting to finally bring it under control. Stores were massively plundered and many were burned. Official sources listed 32
dead (including 27 blacks), more than 800 wounded and 3000 arrests.

ORIGIN OF BOOKS
Antiquity- ancient history, especially the period of time during which the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations flourished
Sumerian language cuneiform script clay tablet, 2400–2200 BC
When writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay, tree bark,
metal sheets—was used for writing. Alphabetic writing emerged in Egypt about 5,000 years ago. The Ancient Egyptians would often
write on papyrus, a plant grown along the Nile River. At first the words were not separated from each other (scriptura continua) and
there was no punctuation. Texts were written from right to left, left to right, and even so that alternate lines read in opposite
directions. The technical term for this type of writing is 'boustrophedon,' which means literally 'ox-turning' for the way a farmer
drives an ox to plough his fields.

Scroll- a roll of paper, parchment, leather, or other material, used for a written document, or a document written on such a roll
Egyptian papyrus showing the god Osiris and the weighing of the heart.
Papyrus, a thick paper-like material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant, then pounding the woven sheet with a
hammer-like tool, was used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty, although the first evidence is from
the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC).[3] Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a
scroll. Tree bark such as lime (Latin liber, from which also comes library) and other materials were also used. According to
Herodotus (History 5:58), the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the tenth or ninth century BC. The Greek
word for papyrus as writing material (biblion) and book (biblos) come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which papyrus
was exported to Greece. From Greek we also derive the word tome (Greek: τόμος), which originally meant a slice or piece and from
there began to denote "a roll of papyrus". Tomus was used by the Latins with exactly the same meaning as volumen; Whether
made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant form of book in the Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, and Hebrew
cultures. The more modern codex book format form took over the Roman world by late antiquity, but the scroll format persisted
much longer in Asia.

Codex- a collection of ancient manuscript texts, especially of the Biblical Scriptures, in book form
Woman holding a book (or wax tablets) in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 AD.
Papyrus scrolls were still dominant in the first century AD, as witnessed by the findings in Pompeii. The first written mention of the
codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the century, where he praises its compactness.
However the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain
widespread use. This change happened gradually during the third and fourth centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex
form of the book are several: the format is more economical, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it is portable,
searchable, and easy to conceal. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan texts
written on scrolls. A Chinese bamboo book Wax tablets were the normal writing material in schools, in accounting, and for taking
notes. They had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted, and reformed into a blank. The custom of binding
several wax tablets together (Roman pugillares) is a possible precursor for modern books (i.e. codex). The etymology of the word
codex (block of wood) also suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets. In the 5th century, Isidore of Seville
explained the relation between codex, book and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13): "A codex is composed of many books; a book is of
one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks (codex) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it
contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches."

Library- a room, building, or institution where a collection of books or other research materials is kept
Celsus Library was built in 135 A.D. and could house around 12,000 scrolls. Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and
fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In ancient world
the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries could have been
either private or public, i.e. for people who were interested in using them. The difference from a modern public library lies in the fact
that they were usually not funded from public sources. It is estimated that in the city of Rome at the end of the third century there
were around 30 public libraries. Public libraries also existed in other cities of the ancient Mediterranean region (e.g. Library of
Alexandria). Later, in the Middle Ages, monasteries and universities had also libraries that could be accessible to general public.
Typically not the whole collection was available to public, the books could not be borrowed and often were chained to reading
stands to prevent theft. The beginning of modern public library begins around 15th century when individuals started to donate
books to towns. The growth of a public library system in the United States started in the late 19th century and was much helped by
donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: The poor or the middle class had to access most books
through a public library or by other means while the rich could afford to have a private library built in their homes. The advent of
paperback books in the 20th century led to an explosion of popular publishing. Paperback books made owning books affordable for
many people. Paperback books often included works from genres that had previously been published mostly in pulp magazines. As
a result of the low cost of such books and the spread of bookstores filled with them (in addition to the creation of a smaller market
of extremely cheap used paperbacks) owning a private library ceased to be a status symbol for the rich. In library and booksellers'
catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as "Crown 8vo" to indicate the paper size from which the book is made.
When rows of books are lined on a book holder, bookends are sometimes needed to keep them from slanting.

"LET'S GO ON A CULTURAL EXPEDITION TOGETHER"
-Brother Hypnotic