Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Summer of Soul/Summer of Struggle…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
25 Aug 2021
Summer of Soul/Summer of Struggle…
Summer of Soul/Summer of Struggle…

BAR's poet in residence pays tribute to fallen Black Panther Party comrades.

Chalk silhouettes, bullet-violated bodies of

Bunchy and John—UCLA, cold Campbell Hall

floor—Punctuated January ’69…like a loud

Prelude to December’s death squad symphonies:

Silencing Chicago songs of spring; Meeting riffs of

Resistance during L. A.’s 5 hour breech birth of SWAT

Sing their names! Sing their names! Names

floating from wings of history’s stage—Names

Never too far from tips, riffs, runs of flattened

tongues of our true singers, shouters, belters…

Magic, Sly, High Priestess African rainbows

in everyday people gospel-blues-soul-funk-jazz—

in Great Black Music—Mississippi to South Africa…

Enveloping, wrapping world peoples in its broad,

Black, sweltering sonic arms—Pre-Bitch-ho/Hope-change

desert storm of white noise; pre-half century rest…

Sing their names! Sing their names! Names

floating from wings of history’s stage—Names

Never too far from tips, riffs, runs of flattened

tongues of our true singers, shouters, belters…

Sing their names! Sing ‘bout blended voices

Voted from ‘office’ with hot lead ballots—

Cast in driveway, ballroom, bedroom, motel,

Polling places! The M’s alone, loop like some

hypnotic drum machine’s licks—repeatedly

pounding trauma into wide Eyes On The Prize…

Sing their names!Sing them as rhythmic

responses to ancient calls of our organic

Leaders.

Sing them as legato ghost note tributes to

Martyrs waking our resistance with

counter melody messages to the Grassroots…

Sing their names! Sing their names! Names

floating from wings of history’s stage—Names

Never too far from tips, riffs, runs of flattened

tongues of our true singers, shouters, belters…

Names forecasting 2020 Summers of Rainbow

Resistance…

© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished poet and performing artist, and an official of the National Writers Union. Find more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.

Black Panther Party

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Southern Panther Malik Rahim
14 May 2025
In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling ra
NY Panther 21
Dhoruba bin-Wahad
55th Anniversary of the NY Panther 21 Case
03 April 2024
The trial of the New York Panther 21 was the moment in the Black liberation movement that ushered in an era of intensified state repressio
Eddie Conway Tribute
Mali Collins
Eddie Conway Tribute
15 March 2023
The late Eddie Conway was a young member of the Black Panther Party who was framed for the killing of a police officer and spent more
BAR Book Forum: Interview with Akinyele Umoja
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Interview with Akinyele Umoja
08 June 2022
As part of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum, we interview scholars about a recent article they’ve written for either an academic journal or p
911 Is a Joke: Preferring to Shoot Unarmed Blacks, Cops Find It Ain't No Fun When the Rabbit Has the Gun
Jon Jeter
911 Is a Joke: Preferring to Shoot Unarmed Blacks, Cops Find It Ain't No Fun When the Rabbit Has the Gun
01 June 2022
Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) began after an LAPD raid on the Black Panthers in 1969 and spread throughout the country.
Bye, Big Sis
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Bye, Big Sis
11 May 2022
                                         
EDITORIAL: Poor Women: Pawns in the Abortion Controversy, The Black Panther, 1980
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
EDITORIAL: Poor Women: Pawns in the Abortion Controversy, The Black Panther, 1980
07 December 2021
A 1980 editorial in The Black Panther argues that the war against abortion is a bi-partisan war against poor women.
Lessons from Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party
Ahjamu Umi
Lessons from Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party
16 June 2021
Just like we glorified the black leather jackets, black berets, and guns in the 60s, we still romanticize African people with guns and mouths that
The Black Panther Party Has Never Been More Popular, but Actual Black Panthers Have Been Forgotten
Santi Elijah Holley
The Black Panther Party Has Never Been More Popular, but Actual Black Panthers Have Been Forgotten
06 May 2021
The name Black Panther is a box-office draw, but can cinematic sympathy be extended to the Panthers who are still living and breathing in this
Newly Obtained FBI Files Shed New Light on the Murder of Fred Hampton
Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher 
Newly Obtained FBI Files Shed New Light on the Murder of Fred Hampton
10 March 2021
That all this time later we are still learning new information about Hampton’s killing is testament to the sheer volume of the effort aimed at this

More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    If We Respond to the Genocide in Palestine the Same Way We’re responding to the Climate Crisis, We Should Expect Many More Loss of Lives
    23 Jul 2025
    The climate crisis and genocide in Gaza share the same root: capitalism’s willingness to sacrifice the masses. Yet, the institutions built to resist have instead become accomplices.
  • Imani Nile
    The Scramble for Mount Vernon? How Capitalists and their Black Middlemen are Colonizing the Jewel of Westchester County, New York
    23 Jul 2025
    A majority Black city in Westchester County, a northern suburb of New York City, suffers from years of Black political misleadership and is now under threat by real estate developers who envision the…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    The Bad Hombre Defense?
    23 Jul 2025
    "The Bad Hombre Defense?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • High Crimes
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    High Crimes and Misdemeanors – Not by Trump but Obama and Democrats
    23 Jul 2025
    The real collusion wasn’t between Trump and Putin; it was between intelligence elites and a Democratic establishment.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: Without Immediate Intervention, the Last Reporters in Gaza Will Die, Agence France-Presse/Société de Journalistes, July 21, 2025
    23 Jul 2025
    “Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts…but none of us remember seeing a colleague die of hunger.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us