I always want to read something about our people's enslavement near the 4th. To keep it light, I also read Rolanda Watts' "Destiny Lingers" She is a sisterfriend and I ran into her at Essence. Then, I finished Paul Taylor's "The Next America." Taylor is the Executive VP at the Pew Research Center, and he uses their excellent data base to talk about the coming "generational showdown" which we are experiencing, at some level, in Black America.

The voter problems and voter suppression, in some ways they're the same thing, but in some ways they're not, because the suppression is evil.

Of course, Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her heart and repeat the hypocritical words, one nation. Whenever we come up on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful oration, The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro. Pledge the flag? I think not!

I've talked to dozens of Chicagoans who will only go off the record in talking about the manufactured mythology.

Trayvon Martin could have been any of our sons, so I was not especially moved by that remark of President [Barack] Obama's.

I like to think that life lessons are learned and re-learned every day and take on importance at different times in life.

As I write in the book, I do not regret either of my votes for President [Barack] Obama, nor my support of him when he ran for the Senate before that. I get excited as I ever did when I see that black man on Air Force One. But I won't settle for symbolism, and our President's record should be open for analysis.