Black Commentator

Black Commentator is an "independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace".

Providing commentary, analysis, and investigation on issues affecting African Americans and the African world.

Founders

The founders of Black Commentator were Peter Gamble and Glen Ford. They met in 1973 when they worked together as network broadcast journalists in Washington, D.C.

In 1977 Ford and Gamble created Americas Black Forum, the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. Under their guidance, ABF was quoted weekly by national and international news organizations. A feat no other Black news entity has accomplished, before or since.

Gamble who serves BC as Publisher and Chief Technical Officer, is the recipient of a national Sigma Delta Chi award for public service in journalism and numerous other honors for excellence in reporting and investigative reporting. The "beats" he covered as a broadcast journalist ranged from activism in the streets to the State Department and White House. The lure of a personal computer on his desk inspired a career change in 1985 and an immersion into what he saw as the future of communications. The acquisition of computer programming skills made it possible for Peter to achieve an important level of self-reliance in the technology of the 21st century.

Ford served as Co-publisher of BC until August of 2006.

About Black Commentator

According to BC's website;

The Black Commentator's core audience is African Americans and the African world and their allies in the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace. It is also important to share Black American and African world perspectives with the rest of the world, a mission uniquely suited to the Internet.

Our focus is commentary, analysis and investigation, elements of political dialogue that are absolutely essential to the creation of movements for social change. Without regular forums for advocacy and debate, a people are at the mercy of their adversaries.

Editorial board

The majority of BC editorial board members are active in one or more of three Marxist organizations-Democratic Socialists of America, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, or the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Board members as of 2009;

   Carl Bloice - A writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

   Julian Bond - Board Chairman, NAACP, the largest and oldest civil rights group in the country. In the 1960s, he co-founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, renowned for its organizing work in the fight against racism. Bond also served 20 years in the Georgia Legislature, he holds twenty-five honorary degrees, is a Distinguished Professor at American University in Washington, DC, and a Professor in history at the University of Virginia. Click here to contact Mr. Bond

   Rose Brewer, PhD - Professor of African American/African Studies, University of Minnesota and a leader of the Black Radical Congress. Click here to contact Dr. Brewer.

   Imani Countess - Senior Director of Public Affairs of TransAfrica Forum and formerly the National Coordinator, Africa Program, American Friends Service Committee. Click here to contact Ms. Countess.

   Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD - A writer, for over thirty years, of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

   Bill Fletcher, Jr. - Servers BlackCommentator.com as Executive Editor. He is also, a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and the co-author of Solidarity Divided:The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice (University of California Press). Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

   James Jennings, PhD - Professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. Click here to contact Dr. Jennings.

   Badili Jones - A writer and organizer who works among African-American LGBTQ persons on the grassroots level and is also a rank and file member of SEIU, Jobs with Justice, and Pride at Work. Click here to contact Mr. Jones.

   Martin Kilson, PhD - Hails from an African Methodist background and clergy: From a great-great grandfather who founded an African Methodist Episcopal church in Maryland in the 1840s; from a great-grandfather AME clergyman; from a Civil War veteran great-grandfather who founded an African Union Methodist Protestant church in Pennsylvania in 1885; and from an African Methodist clergyman father who pastored in an Eastern Pennsylvania milltown--Ambler, PA. He attended Lincoln University (PA), 1949-1953, and Harvard graduate school. Appointed in 1962 as the first African American to teach in Harvard College and in 1969 he was the first African American tenured at Harvard. He retired in 2003 as Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Emeritus. His publications include: Political Change in a West African State (Harvard University Press, 1966); Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); New States in the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 1975); The African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (Harvard University Press, 1976); The Making of Black Intellectuals: Studies on the African American Intelligentsia (Forthcoming. University of MIssouri Press); and The Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1900-2008 (Forthcoming). Click here to contact Dr. Kilson.

   David A. Love - A journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to The Huffington Post, theGrio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.

   Julianne Malveaux, PhD - President of Bennett College for Women. She is an economist, author, and national commentator. Click here to contact Dr. Malveaux.

   Manning Marable, PhD - One of America’s most influential and widely read scholars. Since 1993, Dr. Marable has been Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York City. For ten years, Dr. Marable was founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, from 1993 to 2003. Dr. Marable is an author or editor of over 20 books, including Living Black History (2006); The Autobiography of Medgar Evers (2005); Freedom (2002); Black Leadership (1998); Beyond Black and White (1995); and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983). His current project is a major biography of Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, to be published by Viking Press in 2009. Click here to contact Dr. Marable.

   The Reverend Irene Monroe - A religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not-So-Everyday Moments . As an African American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.

   Leith Mullings, PhD - A Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author or co-author of several books, including On Our Own Terms: Race, Class and Gender in the Lives of African American Women; Freedom: A Photohistory of the African American People; and Stress and Resilience: The Social Context of Reproduction in Central Harlem.. Click here to contact Dr. Mullings.

   Larry Pinkney - a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

   Steven Pitts, PhD - Labor Policy Specialist at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. Click here to contact Dr. Pitts.

   Barbara Ransby, PhD - Historian, writer, and longtime political activist. Dr. Ransby is currently an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Departments of African American Studies and History. She is the author of the award-winning biography, “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision.”. Click here to contact Dr. Ransby.

   Jamala Rogers - Leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and the Black Radical Congress National Organizer. Click here to contact Ms. Rogers.

   Ethel Long-Scott - Executive Director of the Women's Economic Agenda Project, (WEAP). She is known nationally and internationally for devoting her life to the education and leadership of people at the losing end of society, especially women of color. She is dedicated to economic security and justice and believes that the US is engaged in a relentless war against workers and the poor. Click here to contact Ms. Long-Scott.

   William L. (Bill) Strickland - Teaches political science in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also the Director of the Du Bois Papers Collection. The Du Bois Papers are housed at the University of Massachusetts library, which is named in honor of this prominent African American intellectual and Massachusetts native. Professor Strickland is a founding member of the independent black think tank in Atlanta the Institute of the Black World (IBW), headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Strickland was a consultant to both series of the prize-winning documentary on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize (PBS Mini Series Boxed Set), and the senior consultant on the PBS documentary, The American Experience: Malcolm X: Make It Plain.  He also wrote the companion book Malcolm X: Make It Plain. Most recently, Professor Strickland was a consultant on the Louis Massiah film on W.E.B. Du Bois - W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices. Click here to contact Mr. Strickland.

   Chuck Turner - Boston City Council member and founder of the Fund the Dream campaign. He is the Chair of the Council’s Human Rights Committee, and Vice Chair of the Hunger and Homelessness Committee. Click here to contact Councilmember Turner.

   Ron Walters, PhD - Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park.  His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (The Politics of Race and Ethnicity) (University of Michigan Press). Click here to contact Dr. Walters.

   Emira Woods - Co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies (Woods is from Liberia and brings an international viewpoint). Click here to contact Ms. Woods.

   Jeanne Woods, JD - Visiting professor at the University of Maryland School of Law from the College of Law at Loyola University, New Orleans. Click here to contact Ms. Woods.