Black, The Night Is

Brooklyn has changed, a lot. But sometimes you can still find a nice view of the sunset.

Imagine if this had came out today.

Saw Eclipsed last night. A painful but intimate play about how Liberian women survived the recent civil war. The entire cast really poured themselves into this, showing the power of identity in a situation that robs you of one. Afterwards an activist spoke to the crowd and connected Eclipsed to the Nigerian girls that were kidnapped, asking the audience to remember the names of several girls. Had to see this before it closed Sunday, even if it was harrowing. Some of the cast signed playbills when it was over, and that is Lupita in the lower right wearing red. #africandiaspora #blackdiaspora #blackexcellence #blackgirlsrock

Spike Lee with the Prince guitar and Sway holding it down in Brooklyn for the Purple one. #PrincePartyBk

At this time five years ago, I had fulfilled a wish of mine that was going to shake my soul. I had left the country for the first time, and on May 31st, 2011, my feet would touch the soil in Ghana. I had always wanted to travel to somewhere in Africa, and finally making it there was more than just something on my bucket list. Ghana in so many ways was perfect, not only because the majority of Blacks from the slave trade came from Western Africa, but culturally there were so many things that I saw and heard that felt very familiar. The dozen or so Black students that I traveled with, hailing from different parts of the diaspora, all felt our history tracing to these shores. As a Black-American, this trip was filled with so many emotions for me. Joy, sadness, pain, fulfillment, belonging, uplifting, revelation. There were so many great moments from the trip, and I still rewind my mind at times to process it. This picture, taken at the Cape Coast slave castle, was a moment that made real the things we learn about slavey. In many ways my spirit felt shattered as I walked through the place of my origins, but it also gave me a sense of a beginning. An understanding of where my journey, and that of millions of Black people in America, had started. When I sit down to watch the new Roots miniseries, I will have this trip in the back of my head. I cannot emphasize how much this journey meant to me.