SeeingBlack.com Contributors

Esther Iverem
Founder and Editor, SeeingBlack.com

Esther Iverem is a cultural critic, essayist and poet whose film reviews regularly appear on BET.com and SeeingBlack.com. After working for The Washington Post, New York Newsday and The New York Times, she founded SeeingBlack.com [more...]

Karen Juanita Carrillo
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer

Carrillo is a Brooklyn, NY-based writer and photographer. Her articles and photographs have appeared in: The Amsterdam News, The Village Voice, and The City Sun newspapers; EMERGE, Latingirl, Cineaste, City Limits, and THIRD FORCE magazines; the Hispanic Opportunity in Higher Education journal; the Quarterly Black Review of Books; and on-line with SeeingBlack.com, Zipidee.com, and Peacenet.

Carol Chastang
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer

Carol Chastang is a writer based in Bowie, Md. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she wrote about education and the arts for the Los Angeles Times, and has also written for Modern Maturity magazine and The World Tribune, a weekly newspaper published by the SGI-USA, an American Buddhist association. She also works as a spokesperson for the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Patricia Elam
SeeingBlack.com Advice Columnist

Vonda Marshall
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer

Vonda Marshall is a labor attorney practicing in the New York City area. She also serves as an officer on the board of the Charles A. Walburg Multi-Service Organization, Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides meals and other social services to the elder community in central Harlem, New York. As a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., she is co-chair of the Brooklyn Alumnae Chapter's Social Action Committee which provides voter education and registration services and HIV/AIDS education to the Brooklyn community. The Social Action Committee also sponsors a program called the "Youth Political Awareness Group" that has educates young people on local, national and international political issues through trips to the New York State Capitol, the U.S. Congress, and the United Nations.

Mark Anthony Neal
SeeingBlack.com Music and Cultural Critic

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of four books, including the recently published Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (June 2003). According to The Washington Post (June 25, 2003), the book "creates a dense, sensuous space for a critical cultured Black perspective," adding that Neal "may be the first writer capable of developing groundbreaking ideas in the academy and getting a new sticker on his 'ghetto pass' in one stroke." Neal's previous book, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (February 2002), was voted as one of the Top-Ten Books of 2002 by Africana.com. Neal's first book, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (Routledge, Inc., 1998), is described by Michael Eric Dyson as "one of the most brilliant analyses of the last 50 years of black popular music." Neal's latest book, NewBlackMan, is a manifesto of "progressive" Black masculinity. Neal is the co-editor (with Murray Forman) of That's the Joint!: A Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004).

Neal is Associate Professor of Black Popular Culture in the program in African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He holds a doctorate in American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Neal's work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Village Voice, The Chicago Herald, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, SOULS, The Journal of Popular Music Studies and The Journal of Popular Music and Society.

Mumia Abu-Jamal
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a journalist, author and political activist who has been imprisoned in Pennsylvania since 1982, when he was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer in a controversial trial in which he and others declared his innocence. His web site is www.mumia.org. Also, e-mail sent to mumia@webcom.com will be forwarded to Mumia.
He can written at:

Mumia Abu-Jamal
#AM8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370

Jamila White
SeeingBlack.com Web Designer and Internet Strategist

Jamila White is an award-winning Internet strategist who possesses a unique blend of web site development, business strategy, marketing communications and training expertise. Among her accolades for her web productions are a PBS "Eddie" Award, Yahoo! "Pick of the Day,” Project Cool's "Site of the Year," and recognition by The New York Times for excellence in education. Jamila develops and teaches E-Commerce and Internet Marketing workshops throughout the nation. She resides in the Washington, D.C. area. You can reach her on her web sites, http://www.jamilawhite.com and http://www.EcommerceDiva.com.

Harry Amana
SeeingBlack.com Media Critic

Harry Amana is an associate professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, adviser to the Carolina Association of Black Journalists—a student organization—and acting director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center, and the Institute of African American Research.

He came to the school in January 1979 from Temple University, where he had taught for two years in Temple's Journalism Department in the School of Communications. He also worked for two years for the American Friends Service Committee as media coordinator for its Third World Coalition and served for more than 15 years on AFSC national committees. After graduate school, Amana taught for three years at Rutgers University-Camden in the English department. Amana is also a founding-committee member of the Institute of African American Research, and a former advisory-board chair of the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center. In 2000 he was elected to his second consecutive three-year term on the N.C. Humanities Council.

Robin D. G. Kelley
SeeingBlack.com Music and Cultural Critic

Robin D. G. Kelley, professor of history and Africana studies at New York University, is a writer completing a biography of Thelonious Monk. His most recent book is Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press 2002).

Makani Themba-Nixon
Political Columnist, SeeingBlack.com

Makani Themba-Nixon is executive director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance equity and social justice. A long time organizer and nationally renowned trainer, Makani has published numerous articles and case studies on race, media and policy advocacy. She is co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention. Her latest book is Making Policy, Making Change available from Jossey-Bass.

Debi Williams
SeeingBlack.com Diaspora Correspondent

Debi Williams is a writer and former NPR producer who lives between Cameroon, Paris and Washington, D.C. Listen to her NPR 100 features on Stevie Wonder and Mahalia Jackson at www.npr.org.

© Copyright 2001-05 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved.