Because black history is what student-oriented Class -- subtitled "A Potent Third World Concept . . . Caribbean/Latin/African/(American) Sights & Sounds" -- is all about, Black History Month requires no extra editorial efforts. Nevertheless, the magazine has assembled a comprehensive package on Haiti for its February/March issue, with short articles on Haitian Creole, widely spoken but little taught; the much misunderstood practice of voodoo; Haitian art and the indigenous music forms called zouk, compas and raboday; and Chicago founder Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, born on the island to a French father and African mother.
More extensive, and more compelling, are the accounts of Haiti's turbulent political history, from late-18th-century liberator Toussaint L'Ouverture to current President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who faces many of the same problems. Elie Fleurant, a biographer of L'Ouverture, stresses that the early leader "repeatedly preached reconciliation, tolerance and unity" among the black, mixed-race and white residents of the island. Nearly 200 years later, Mr. Aristide's call for the police, army and population to "live in peace" were met with cries of "Down with reconciliation . . . long live trial and justice!"
Class also contains a profile of Maryland's Kweisi Mfume, the outgoing chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a leading critic of American dealings with Haiti.
He's also on the cover of this month's Ebony, which obviously prefers Valentine's Day to Black History Month themes for cover appeal: The dapper Mr. Mfume and actress Lynn Whitfield are one of the "10 hottest couples" in the country.
You can also learn "How To Celebrate Black History Month 12 Months of the Year" on the inside -- no color photos, no cutesy copy. DuSable crops up again: The no-byline article also mentions that Chicago citizens are lobbying for a monument for the pioneer founder, "not honored in the name of a single major thoroughfare, not even an alley."
Black and female
Author, editor and African-American lesbian activist Barbara Smith shares a personal and intellectual history in the January/February issue of Ms.
Ms. Smith is the co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, a group based in Boston from 1974 to 1981 that sponsored retreats for black female writers and activists and still has a profound significance to Ms. Smith. "We understood that dealing with sexual politics didn't mean that you weren't a race woman, and that speaking out about homophobia didn't mean that you didn't want to end poverty."
In the interview by Patricia Bell-Scott, Ms. Smith also recounts some of the responses to her enamel pin of "the perfect food" -- the watermelon. "I could tell a lot about people by how they reacted to my watermelon pin. Those who were obviously down with me would laugh and say, 'Oh, that's so wonderful.' Then there were other people who couldn't laugh, and they'd ask, 'What is that for? What does it represent?' So I'd think of little answers like 'I belong to an organization where we eat watermelon once every month, even when it's out of season.' Occasionally some black person would say, 'Well, don't you think that's racist?' I'd say, 'No, it's not racist; watermelon is a fruit! Now, if I had a white person up here on my lapel, then we could say that that was an embodiment or a depiction of someone or something that could potentially be racist."
Ms. Smith's aunt told her that they called watermelons "letters from home." "They were precious," Ms. Smith says. Sadly, she's lost the pin.