James Bonard Fowler

James Bonard Fowler is the Alabama state trooper who admitted to shooting the unarmed civil rights protester, church deacon and voter registrar Jimmie Lee Jackson in February of 1965.

Jackson's death inspired the marches from Selma to Montogmery, which in turn inspired the Voting Rights Act.


This is the Selma march, and I believe this is John Lewis taking it in the head.

Fowler was indicted 42 years later and his trial was set for October 2008.

Alabama Circuit Court Judge Tommy Jones postponed it.

Here's to you, Jimmie. Thank you. You are not forgotten.





( NYT piece on Fowler indictment )

Quick, When I Say "African Art", What Do You See?

Malick Sidibe, Christmas Eve, 1963


Ouattara Watts, Dream Support



Jane Alexander, Butcher Boys



Samuel Fosso



Willem Boshoff, Kaartland


Kamala Ishaq Ibrahim, Loneliness


12th-14th century Yoruba shrine head

Not. You probably, with all the rest of us, visualize tribal art, as if Africa had no other past or present:


19th c. Fang mask, Louvre

Even if you're as hip as gloeden and me, you'll probably know little more than the post-colonial camp -- a polemic -- of the heavenly Afro-Brit, Yinka Shonibare. It's hard to get past:


Yinka Shonibare, Reverend on Ice

And while I am much less expert than most of you in the matter of indie rock and cultural appropriation, I submit this: of all the things the indie band Vampire Weekend may be guilty of, their joyous rendering of Afropop music is a good thing. Knocking them for ripping off African happy music, or, more crudely, as I suspect is the actual case, knocking them because they're not playing tribal mask African music or politically correct tormented revolutionary polemic African music, is racist in a particularly ignorant and yet arrogant way.

Clickez ici, as we say in Africa, for a short review of the art exhibit which accompanied The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, which every citizen of the world should own. The first show of its kind curated by (gasp!) an African, Okwui Enwezor.