I'm Krista Tippett, today, Black and Universal.

My guest, E. Ethelbert Miller, is a poet and self-described literary activist at Howard

University.

We'll explore his playful and challenging take on the evolution of blackness in the

last half century, not the color of skin but the color of ideas, artistic, political

and spiritual.

This is what I feel sometimes, you know, African-Americans can play a key role.

You know what it means to be an outsider, you know what it means to be a press, but you

also know in terms of, you know, how to move beyond that.

This is what people, I think, around the world look at, or use to look at when they would

look at jazz or blues.

They would see the universe out, they would say, okay, I see the hurt, the pain, but I

also see the joy in here, the joy in this celebration.

You know, teach me to play that music.

This is Speaking of Faith, stay with us.

Speaking of Faith is supported by the Fetzer Institute, sponsor of Karen Armstrong's

Charter for Compassion.

You can learn more at Fetzer.org.

I'm Krista Tippett.

E. Ethelbert Miller is a poet, self-described literary activist and longtime director of

the Afro-American Studies Resource Center at Howard University.

He first went there when it was a crucible of a new kind of black identity in the 1960s.

...