African American Registry

10/06/2026

The Improtance of Voting in a Democracy - https://mailchi.mp/540d2a6bcb82/journal-of-the-registry-bhm-10350163

10/06/2026

Here is a short nudge of mid-term wisdom for democracy from the African American Registry’s video archives.

10/03/2026

Saturday Verse (poems & lyrics)
Please read, HALF BLACK, HALF BLACKER by Sterling Plumpp.

i went down to malcolmland
me come back a man.

me return with blackness
drippin from my every breath.
i went down to malcolmland
unprepared
but him gave me a grass sack
him told me to stuff-in all the blackness
i could
him told me
to run as fast as me could
back to blackpeople
back to blackpeople
so me wouldn’t lose
all my goodies

i went down to malcolmland me come back a man.

me left my kness
& lifted my eyes eastward
& me ran me ran…
malcolm say god black love black
man black heaven black heaven here
me made black
but me hadta run back
thru fire
with a sack of blackness
on my shoulders.
me think I all black, sometimes
me think I all black others
cause me may lose some blackness
tryin to bring it to blackpeople

i go down to malcolmland
me come back a man.

me black when
me think about Malcolm, Medgar, Martin,
Fred, Bobbies, Mark, Lumumba…
me lose some blackness
when me don’t do nothin
ain’t me black?
ain’t me black?
when
i am in malcolmland
me know me be blacker…

Reference:
Sterling Plumpp, https://aaregistry.org/story/poet-with-a-stroke-of-luck-sterling-plumpp/

Category: Freedom

*Sterling Plumpp was born on this date in 1940. He is an African American poet, and educator. From in Clinton, Mississippi, he was reared by his maternal grandparents, Mattie and Victor Emmanuel. They were sharecroppers, and Plumpp and his brother worked the fields with their grandparents. He and hi...

09/27/2026

Happy birthday 🎉 to Jazz Man Bud Powell 

Bud Powell, African American jazz pianist and composer, was born on this date in 1924. Born Earl Powell in New York City, he was the son and grandson of musicians. He began studying European classical forms as a child. He helped to bring jazz piano into the modern age. Regarded as an originator of t...

09/27/2026

Saturday Verse (poems & lyrics)
Please read, " Florwax Mother by Harryette Mullen.

My mother warned me I’d perish in dirt:
Girl, how you going to take care of a filthy man
when you got so many nasty habits yourself?
Ambition don’t make you immune to the facts of life.
Ask me, you do too much dreaming and scheming and not nearly enough cleaning.

Let me tell you, honey, even career women have to
wipe their man’s p*e off the toilet seat before they sit down.
You got to get realistic one of these days,
or do you think you going to
paint finger pictures in grimy window panes,
grow gardens under gritty fingernails,
practice broad-jumping the length of the un-swept hall
with a pile of dirty laundry to cushion your landing,
and raise bacteria cultures for research on greasy kitchen plates?
Girl, don’t you know men’s mammas tell them stuff like:
Look under a woman’s bed to see if there’s dust
so you’ll know if she’d make a bad wife.

Mama, don’t let me get ugly now, but if I let a man into my bedroom it ain’t going to be so he can check for dust.
And any man I catch looking under the bed,
I’ll send him right back to his floorwax mother….

Category: Family

09/24/2026

Hello, it’s a public holiday in South Africa

https://aaregistry.org/story/heritage-day-south-africa-is-celebrated/

*On this date in 1995, Heritage Day is affirmed. This is a South African public holiday celebrating its culture, diversity, and traditions, in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people. In KwaZulu-Natal, September 24 was known as Shaka Day for most people, commemorating Shaka, the...

09/19/2026

Saturday Verses (poems & lyrics)
Please read HIP HOP CHAZAL by Patricia Smith.

Gotta love
us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out
in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the
jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling
bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like
something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,

wrapping
around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.

Engines
grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.

Natural
minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.

Gotta love
us girls, just struttin’ down Manhattan streets

killing the
menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.

Crying ’bout
getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off

what God
gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.

BY Patricia Smith, Copyright 2007

Category: Rituals: Music, Dance, Sports

09/12/2026

Saturday Verses (poems and lyrics)
Please read A DADDY POEM by William J. Harris, 1977.

My father is a handsome guy. Looks like a cross between Clark Gable & Ernest Hemingway. If you don't believe me, I got proof: Once a white woman (at one of those parties) said to my father, "You're good looking for a colored man."

09/11/2026

Never Forget!!!!

On this date in 2001, 12 Black firefighters died during the 9/11 attack at the World Trade Center in New York City. They were among the 343 firefighters and the almost 3,000 citizens who were victims of the attack in New York City. The 12 Black firefighters were Vernon Cherry, André Fletcher, Geral...

08/29/2026

We are affirming Micharl Jacksons birthday with our Substack page 'Saturday Verses, poems & lyrics.'Michael Jackson's!

Please read MAN IN THE MIRROR sung by Michael Jackson