Maxine Gordon has loved jazz music all her life. From going to hear Miles Davis and John Coltrane as a teenager, to working as a road manager and promoter when she was a young woman, to becoming the personal manager and ultimately the wife of one of the most influential jazz artists of the twentieth century, Maxine has seen it all. She makes full use of these experiences in her new book, Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon (University of California Press). [Read more…] about Love and jazz
African-American
A newly identified work by writer and poet Fenton Johnson
In the midst of research for The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door exhibition, my former colleague Molly Schwartzburg alerted me to an unpublished manuscript she had located in the collection of writer and editor Christopher Morley (known today for his novel Parnassus on Wheels and his work on the editorial board of the Book-of-the-Month Club). [Read more…] about A newly identified work by writer and poet Fenton Johnson
Frederick Douglass and the Mass Meeting for Civil Rights
February 20, 2017, marks the 122nd anniversary of Frederick Douglass’s death. Douglass (1818–1895), an abolitionist and activist for civil rights, was a gifted writer and orator. [Read more…] about Frederick Douglass and the Mass Meeting for Civil Rights
