At one end of the continuum known as history are first-time events that have generated notable measures of public recognition due to either a positive or negative impact.

When reading about what may be described as the lesser celebrated heroic figures of the Harlem Renaissance, we rarely get a definitive look at just how complicated and sometimes dangerous their everyday lives were. In fact, until the past ten years, many defined the period primarily by its well-known literary, musical, and artistic elements while overlooking the fact there was any political component to it at all.

And therein shines one major definition of what it meant to be Clinton D. Powell: someone who looked for, trusted in, and helped empower (if you will) the best in others. It takes a lot of beautiful love, uncommon sincerity, and spitfire courage to do that.

Compassion crowns the soul with its truest victory.

The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.

There is in Albert Camus’ literary craftsmanship a seductive intelligence that could almost make a reader dismiss his philosophical intentions if he had not insisted on making them so clear.

If life is a birthday cake let my face be smeared with its icing of cognac and kindness.