Today's Thoughtful Thursday presents the poem "What Shall I Tell My Children Who are Black (Reflections of an African American Mother)" by artist, poet, author, and educator Margaret Burroughs (1915-2010). It was written in 1968, but could well have been written this week. In it Burroughs addresses the issue of how to raise black boys up to be confident [...]
Whenever some racially based fresh hell befalls a Black person we at GCP, along with so many others, are compelled to cry out. Sometimes we write about how to talk to our children about the latest horror, trying to walk that fine line between telling them the way of the world to help build their armor and scaring them [...]
Memorial Day is a few days away. While we are usually celebrating it as summer's official start, this year it makes much more sense to think about what the holiday is really about: honoring those who have died during war while serving the U.S. Honoring our war heroes. These days our war heroes have expanded beyond members of the [...]
As we wrap up the second full month of lockdown, we at GCP want to pay tribute to all of the many people who have been lost in this pandemic. Friends and family members who succumbed to the Covid-19 virus, as well as those lost to unrelated illnesses. Families and loved ones have been denied the ability to publicly [...]
We know this horrific story, we've heard it too many times before: On February 23rd, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25 year old Black man, was shot and killed by two white men as he jogged around his Georgia neighborhood. For almost three months, no charges were brought against the two men, a father and son who were known by [...]
There are glimmers of encouraging COVID-19 news these days: mortality rates falling, hospital admissions going down and releases going up, a drug showing promise at combatting the virus. In this spirit, today's Thoughtful Thursday offers poems of encouragement and hope. First, a favorite from Lucille Clifton (1936-2010), "Blessing the Boats", which holds the promise of a better day. "Instructions [...]
For today's Thoughtful Thursday (yes, we KNOW it's Friday, but in Covid-19 world the days are all running together) we continue to celebrate Poetry Month with a couple of poems about poetry. So meta, right? We start with Elizabeth Alexander's (b.1962) "Ars Poetica #100", in which she encourages her students (who are all of us) to find our poetic [...]
Since you are primarily in charge of teaching your children these days, why not teach them some poetry? April is Poetry Month, after all. In today's Thoughtful Thursday we will look at three poems by African American poets (all women, in fact), which you and your children can enjoy learning about and discussing. If you need some motivation to [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday features the poems of Marilyn Nelson, whose work we first featured in December 2019 . Marilyn Nelson was born in Cleveland, Ohio and was raised on several military bases, as her father was in the Air Force. Dr. Nelson, who began writing poetry in elementary school, earned her BA from the University of California, Davis, a masters [...]
Yesterday brought news that rocked the world of art and culture. Two African American giants, one of art and one of music, are gone, fallen to COVID-19: artist, art historian and curator Dr. David Driskell, and jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis. In today's Thoughtful Thursday we pay tribute to these great men. Dr. [...]