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For children, books make the best gift
By Bill Maxwell, Columnist, St. Petersburg Times
Reprinted from the St. Petersburg Times
If you want to buy a special Christmas gift for a child, especially one in poverty, buy a good book he or she will enjoy reading.
I am writing on this subject because I had the pleasure of hearing Doris Lessing's recent Nobel lecture that focused on the importance of reading, especially in the lives of writers.
My memories of Mrs. King
By Bill Maxwell, Columnist, St. Petersburg Times
Reprinted from the St. Petersburg Times
Tuesday marks the first anniversary of Coretta Scott King's death. I did not know her as a personal friend. I knew her as a civil rights worker from a respectful distance.
Where I began to look inside
By Bill Maxwell, Columnist, St. Petersburg Times
Reprinted from the St. Petersburg Times
The other day, I had a blast from the past.
A loyal reader, a woman who was one of mother's playmates in Mascotte, Fla., telephoned from her Lake County home to welcome me back to the St. Petersburg Times. Our talk drifted into memories of the one-room schoolhouse in the then-all-black village of Stuckey. Blacks attended the school from first through 12th grade until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
What does it mean to be an American?
By Bill Maxwell, Columnist
Reprinted from the Tuscaloosa News
“The highlight of my trip [to New York] came Friday night, when three of my friends and I experienced 'Dralion,’ Cirque du Soleil’s avant-garde-arts spectacle under the big top. … We took a ferry across the Hudson River to Liberty State Park. The cast of Dralion -- 56 artists from eight countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, France, Ivory Coast, Ukraine and the United States) -- symbolized all that is American.
King displayed grace, dignity, beauty, dedication to justice
By Bill Maxwell, Associate Professor of Journalism at Stillman College
Reprinted from the Tuscaloosa News
I do not claim to have known Coretta Scott King well. I did not. I knew her from a respectful distance. When I learned that she had died, I felt honored to have known her at all.
I met her for the first time in the summer of 1964, when I had finished my freshman year at Wiley College in Texas and had signed up as a student organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I went to Atlanta with about 25 other Texas students. In Atlanta, we joined about 150 other students from elsewhere in the South, and we all spent a week learning how register people to vote and how to protest peacefully.
More young blacks are suicidal
By Bill Maxwell, Associate Professor of Journalism at Stillman College
Reprinted from the Tuscaloosa News
A popular Dick Gregory joke when I was a teenager was that white people committed suicide by jumping from skyscrapers, while blacks killed themselves by leaping from their basements. It always cracked us up.
The suggestion was that suicide was a white phenomenon. Black people were too tough to take their own lives. After all, we had endured slavery, lynching, Jim Crow and hundreds of years of poverty. Suicide epitomized weakness. Even talking about it was taboo.
“[Blacks] were always able to laugh or pray their way out of the worst adversity," writes author Earl Hutchinson.
That article of faith has proved false. I’m reminded of this fact because Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy’s son, James, is reported to have committed suicide.
A tribute to a great man, August Wilson
By Bill Maxwell, Associate Professor of Journalism at Stillman College
Reprinted from the Gainesville Guardian October 24, 2005
Wilson 's legacy will endure long after his death because he accomplished something special: He put a sympathetic face on the lives of ordinary African Americans by universalizing our human condition, our concerns, our fears, our aspirations.
This column is not an obituary. It is a tribute to a great man.
I had the honor of meeting black playwright August Wilson four times, once in Pittsburgh for an article I was writing and three times in New York when his plays were on Broadway.
Coping in times of suffering
By Bill Maxwell, Associate Professor of Journalism at Stillman College
Taken from the The Tuscaloosa News, September 6, 2005
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned in life: It goes on.
--Robert Frost
How to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina?
Our responses are individual and personal. No two of us respond the same, not in that hidden place that we share with no one else -- that well of experiences sustains us through our suffering. No one can legitimately tell another person that his response is good or bad. A person’s response is a manifestation of his worldview.
Role Models Today Publisher and Stillman Scholar in Residence
Begins Writing Weekly Column
Taken from the The Tuscaloosa News, January 9, 2005 from staff reports
February 15, 2005
Bill Maxwell, who gave up a career as a newspaper columnist to teach at Stillman College, will return to column writing beginning Monday.
Maxwell will write a weekly column for The Tuscaloosa News that will appear in the West Alabama section on Mondays. He will continue to teach journalism and English at Stillman.
“Basically, I’m going to write about interesting people in Tuscaloosa and the rest of West Alabama,’’ Maxwell said. “It will be about the South, significant institutions and trends. There’s going to be a real/shuman-interest approach.’’
Celebrating
Black History: Black Firsts
Compiled
by Bill Maxwell, Publisher
February 18, 2004
The following list describes the wide range of events in African-American
history. These breakthroughs, great and small, tell of courageous
people who refused to accept old limitations, who refused to surrender
to hardship and injustice. Moreover, these firsts combine to reveal
a very personal and nontheoretical chart of the progress of equal
opportunity and black achievement in America.
'We're
in this struggle together'
By
Bill Maxwell
September 21, 2003
Besieged
by harsh economic realities and critics who say their time has passed,
historically black colleges face an uncertain future. But they virtually
created the African-American middle class, and they still know how
to motivate students to succeed.
A dialogue on race takes center stage
By
Bill Maxwell
July 8, 2003
For
three weeks, I enjoyed one of the greatest experiences in a writer's
life: Hundreds of people streamed into a theater, paying $20 to
$30 a ticket, to see a play that I co-authored. From May 23 through
June 15, Parallel Lives, the 90-minute, autobiographical dramatic
work Beverly Coyle and I wrote, had its world premiere at American
Stage in St. Petersburg.
Service to others gives meaning to life
By Bill Maxwell
May 28, 2003
Well,
that time of the year has rolled around again: the commencement
season, when newly minted graduates are jettisoned into the real
world of labor, when mom and dad and that reliable Rich Uncle stop
sending checks.
You're Never Too Young to Learn about Politics
By
Bill Maxwell
September 16, 2002
In
November, Florida residents will elect a
new governor and lieutenant governor. Do
you know names of the candidates? We also
will elect members of the Cabinet. Do you
know who the candidates are? Can you identify
those running, for example, for commissioner
of agriculture? What about attorney general
and chief financial officer?/font>
Blacks share a duty to one another
By
Bill Maxwell
February 3, 2002
DAYTONA BEACH -- When I was an undergraduate
here at Bethune-Cookman College during
the 1969-1970 term, my friends and I used
joke that we would know we had "made
it" when our alma mater invited us
back to campus as a keynote speaker.
Graduates,
serve your communities
By Bill Maxwell
June 6, 2001
Graduates,
serve your communities. In addition to
striving to achieve personal success,
go out and serve others. By service to
others, I do not mean quid pro quo, doing
something for something similar in return.
I mean unselfish kindness and generosity,
acts that validate your good fortune,
that give meaning to your lives and, above
all, that sustain and dignify the lives
of others.
Literacy is Freedom
By Bill Maxwell
From the St. Petersburg Times, “Real
Life - Real Learning,”
April, 2001
For good reasons, slave owners in the American South persuaded their legislators to
pass a law prohibiting slaves from learning how to read. When abolitionists moved into an
area to spread their subversive message of freedom for slaves, one of their first efforts
was to establish a place where black chattel could learn to read.... |
