March/April 2003

CONTENTS

COVER STORY (Cover photo: Corbis/Bettman)
— 'The Souls of Black Folk,' A Century Hence
*W.E.B. Du Bois' seminal essays were originally published in 1903. One hundred years later, his words remain remarkably relevant to our current political and economic situation.
By David Levering Lewis

FEATURES
— The Crisis Interview: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)
The new head of the Congressional Black Caucus on his group's agenda, President Bush, Black voters, the Democratic Party, the war with Iraq and who he thinks would be a viable Black candidate for president
By Kevin Merida

— A Game of Her Own
Negro League pitcher Mamie "Peanut" Johnson, who played for the Indianapolis Clowns, shares the story of her life in baseball
By Leah Y. Latimer

— Mary McLeod Bethune: Race Woman
A veteran of colored women's clubs and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, she was both a race leader and a government insider
By Joyce A. Hanson

DEPARTMENTS
- Editor's Note

- Letters

- Up Front: A working class, overwhelmingly minority force will fight war with Iraq; Are war protests falling on deaf ears?; Black lawyers behind President Bush's affirmative action stance; Remembering Emmett Till's mother; Rosa Parks' segregation-era bus restored
Questions: Christopher Benson on collaborating on Mamie Till Mobley's memoir

- The Color Line: Theodore M. Shaw and Elsie C. Boddie on what's at stake in the affirmative action cases before the U.S. Supreme Court

- Crisis Forum
* Film: Actor Danny Glover is passionate about his real-life role as human rights activists
* Books:
— Review of Gender Talk: The Struggle for Black Women's Equality in African American Communities by Johnetta B. Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall;
— Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer;
— Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk: Thoughts on the Groundbreaking Classic Work of W.E.B. Du Bois by Stanley Crouch and Playthell Benjamin
— Islam in Black American: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought by Edward E. Curtis IV and Black Pilgrimage to Islam by Robert Dannin.
— Plus, a look at a groundbreaking new book Jubilee: THe Emergence of African-American Culture by Howard Dodson

- Backstory: Lori S. Robinson on the vital role men must play in addressing the issue of sexual assault

- The NAACP Today
* NAACP Seeks NGO status at U.N.;
* Branch News: Newark, N.J.

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W.E.B. Du Bois