The Toni Morrison Society conference is coming up! This year’s conference will be held in New York, New York from July 21-24th at The Roosevelt Hotel. The theme for this year is “Toni Morrison and her Role as Editor.” Project HBW’s Language Matters is an NEH funded program of the Toni Morrison Society designed to promote dialogue and provide educational resources on the works of Toni Morrison. Learn more about this year’s Toni Morrison Society conference and Project HBW’s Language Matters program. 

Walton Muyumba reviewed the book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education by Mychal Denzel Smith. Smith’s memoir is a coming of age tale which critiques the forces that muffle young black voices and derail them from attaining a black manhood. Read more about the review at Mychal Denzel Smith Connects the Black Millennial Experience to the African-American Literacy Tradition.

Author Alice Walker wrote a poem, “Here it is,” in response to Jesse Williams’s speech at the BET Awards. During an award acceptance speech, Williams spoke out against the system that has continued to divide and suppress black men and women. Read Walker’s poem and view Williams’s speech here on Alice Walker’s official website.

Karen Grigsby Bates of NPR remembered civil rights activist and Tuskegee airman Roscoe C. Brown. After the war, Brown went on to earn a PhD from NYU and entered the education sector, serving as the president of Bronx Community College and the director of both the Center for Urban Education Policy at the Graduate School and the University Center of the City University of New York. Brown died on Saturday at the age of 94.

Months after the Release of Ta Nehisi Coates’s newest Marvel Comics character The Black Panther, Marvel has introduced yet another black hero into he Marvel lineup. Riri Williams, the newest Ironman, is a 15 year old black girl who build a suit of armor in her dorm room at MIT. Read more about The Black Panther character at Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther review – a promising, subversive start.

Dr. Jerry W. Ward, Jr. wrote on the rhetoric of Donald Trump in his piece “Political Pornography.”