Happy Independence Day from GCP! Hope you all are enjoying the day with your family and friends. May your bbq be tasty and the fireworks delightful. Have a safe and wonderful holiday. To celebrate the day, we will give the Fourth of July the Thoughtful Thursday treatment. Here are some poems from an assortment of poems about America from [...]
Happy Father's Day from GCP to all of the fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and all of the wonderful men who give fatherly love and direction to children who may not be theirs by birth but are theirs by choice. Here are some poems and thoughts about fatherhood. Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up early and put his [...]
With great sorrow we turn yet again to the topic of how we talk to our sons about a senseless tragedy. This time it is the horrific massacre of nine Black parishioners in a historic black church in Charleston by a 21-year-old white young man. Images of the victims smiling with their families in the days prior and of [...]
Did you know that June is African-American Music Appreciation Month? In a proclamation signed on May 29th, President Obama declared the month of June as the time that we should "recognize the artists who have enriched our lives and the ways their beats and harmonies have advanced our unending journey toward a more perfect union." He further explained, "By [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday features poems from two iconic African-American poets, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Alice Walker. Dunbar's "By The Stream" cautions us to remember to look beyond the sparkle and glow of personality to determine the depth of character. Walker's "Before You Knew You Owned It" offers words of wisdom about managing expectations and guarding vulnerability. On the lighter [...]
It is graduation season, and speakers everywhere are polishing up their speeches and getting ready to share their wisdom and advice with the Class of 2015 and their families. Today's Thoughtful Thursday features quotes from past graduation speeches. Some are funny, some thought provoking, some inspirational. Enjoy, and Congrats to the graduates! "Think hard, always think hard, but don't [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday presents the work of award-winning poet Terrance Hayes. Born in 1971 in Columbia, South Carolina, Hayes received a BA from Coker College and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, and is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. "Lighthead", his collection of poems published in 2010, won a National Book Award, and Hayes received a [...]
Hard to believe we need protest poetry again this year, and we are only four months in. Today's Thoughtful Thursday salutes Haki Madhubuti, poet and member of the Black Arts Movement. Madhubuti's work with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) informs his activist poetics. As he [...]
Ten African-American poets contributed to the Migration Series Poetry Suite created in celebration of the Jacob Lawrence exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The works of a few of them are below. Enjoy. Thataway And the migrants kept coming —Jacob Lawrence Was walking. Was walking & then waiting for a train, the 12:40 to [...]
This week the world watched the video of Walter Scott being shot and killed by the South Carolina police officer who has since been charged with murder and fired from the force. This week our Thoughtful Thursday offering is focused on justice. L. Chris Stewart, the lawyer the Scott family hired once they learned of the video's existence, had [...]