Anything Prose

African / Caribbean Videos at U. of Colorado

Do you like lists and short descriptive paragraphs about culture, history and biography? Try this catalog of films on African American and Caribbean culture. It might fit. Click HERE It is a PDF file.

Sample entries:

Adam Clayton Powell
53 min Sr.High/College
A candid chronicle of the influence
and personality of this powerful politician
and Civil Rights leader. Archival footage,
photographs and onscreen interviews tell
the story of Powell’s achievements–from
smashing racial barriers in 1930’s Harlem
to spearheading Congressional social
legislation in the 1960’s. While a
flamboyant lifestyle led to political ruin,
Powell’s story provides a perspective on
America as it entered the Civil Rights era.

Produced by Richard Kilberg. (1989
DCINEMA)
V00595,VH VHS Video
. . . + + + . . .
Black Is...Black Ain’t
86 min Sr.High/College
Producer Marlon Riggs’ last film
explores African American identity by
weaving together the testimony of those
whose complexion, class, gender, speech
or sexuality has made them feel "too
black" or "not black enough." Riggs
locates the essence of "blackness" in
African Americans’ courage from slavery
down to the present to improvise a
positive meaning in their lives in the face
of discrimination and suffering. Riggs
expresses his reaction to dealing with
AIDS from which he died before final
completion of the film.

Produced by
Marlon Riggs and Signifyin’ Works.
(1995CNEWS)
AV0433,VH VHS Video
. . . + + + . . .
Bernice Johnson Reagon: The
Singing Warrior
40 min College
An interview with Bernice Johnson
Reagon, SNCC freedom singer and
founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, at
the Iliff School of Theology, Denver,
Colorado on October 27, 1997. Contents
include: On childhood religion – On
activism – On singing – Songforms and
democracy – On being an elder –
Understanding the movement.

(2000
ILIFF)
V09962,VH VHS Video

The listings are from the video library of the University of Colorado at Boulder

Acrobat Reader is worth your time for the free download to access gems like these.

The video library list of mediagraphies links is topical. The interesting PDF files can be found HERE

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Rhetoric and Liberty, Fraternity and Strength as Ultimate Terms

Rhetoric of Liberty, Fraternity and Strength

Anything Prose -
My work sometimes involves writing, translating and editing speeches. The oratory is for people in sciences, trade and education as well a for Black History Month speakers. So I am challenged with perspectives ranging from diverse African cultures to Caribbean and African-Canadian and American.

I do not pretend to understand all the subtleties of what I do but I try to do it well. Today I discovered a resource on the Internet that is worth sharing to stimulate thought about how terms such as unity, solidarity, struggle, liberty, freedom, union, and strength or force are used. -- Ross, rjp

From: Ed Lamoureux ,Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Speech Communication, Bradley University) Peoria IL

Ed Lamoureux's Rhetorical Resources
( http://bradley.bradley.edu/%7Eell/index3.html )

See the brief notes on Approaches to African American Rhetorical Theory
Some of the many difficulties

From the notes concerning RICHARD M. WEAVER (1910 - 1963)

Weaver's --

* Ideas were clearly in line with Platonic thinking.
* Interpreted in a framework of Christian theology.
* He is criticized for the ethnocentrism of his Southern thinking.

Weaver argued that:

Grammatical categories, like sources of arguments, can also be revealing of the rhetor's world view.

1. Weaver considers sentences important because they show how the mind unites two or more classes.
. . a. The simple sentence indicates an "elementary level of perception."
. . b. The complex sentence shows that the mind has performed the second step of analysis: ordering rank and value.
. . c. The compound sentence can either represent artlessness or a mature sentence showing the ability to present points in close relationship.

2. Weaver also analyzes the parts of speech as important to the motives of the speaker.
. . a. Nouns deal with complete substances, such as a tree or a leaf.
. . b. Because adjectives are added to nouns, they are secondary in nature, and may show that reality has been tampered with.
. . c. Verbs rank with nouns in force since they present a "paradox of both being and becoming".

C. Ultimate Terms reveal the rhetor's world view.

1. Ultimate terms are uncontested rhetorical absolutes which represent and motivate us towards the ideal of the tyrannizing image.

2. There are three major categories of ultimate terms.
. . a. God terms receive the highest respect in a culture and have the capacity to demand sacrifice.
. . b. Devil terms signify the greatest evil and enemy of culture.
. . c. Charismatic terms are given power by populace.

Weaver is credited with bringing American conservatives together into a cohesive movement.

African-Americans Get Even

Unity ‘04 Project

The National Coalition for Black Civic Participation (NCBCP) is to launch its Unity ‘04 project, a coalition of a dozen Black organisations that will use their collective strength to implement a series of voter initiatives leading up to the November 2004 election.

Ms. Trice Edney reports that groups are registering and educating early, and planning major get-out-to-vote and voter protection campaigns, including lawyers as watchdogs at the polls, to avoid electoral problems in 2004.

Need I add that all this is about defeating Bush as well as empowering African-Americans.

Everybody, white and black, who cherishes peace and liberty is still upset at the thousands of votes in Democratic Party strongholds that were not even counted -- how George Bush did not even win the plurality of votes in 2000, yet he sits in the White House today.

In the key state for the electoral college determination of presidential victory, which turned out to be Florida, African-American votes were the make-or-break margin, and we are convinced that the precincts with the most Black voters were the sites of fraud and chicanery on the part of the Republican Establishment.
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