Three years on, and I'm still checkin' for fools. July 13 marks the three-year anniversary of the inception of "Your Negro Tour Guide." This is your 140th Tour, regardless of where you hopped on or   

In 1970, Sen. Strom Thurmond hired Thomas Moss. A black South Carolinian and director of the Voter Education Project, which advocated black voter registration, Moss was the first black person hired  

Hal McKinney's dogs want to eat me. Alerted by incessant barking, the 54-year-old Northsider appears in the doorway of his Chase Avenue home. Approaching the tall wooden fence, he assures his dogs  

The meat isn't brown. I'd heard and believed the urban legend that said meat sold at the Over-the-Rhine Kroger was so near the end of its shelf life it was as brown as the customers who shopped the  

"You know, there's nothing worse than being wrong around white folks." -- Jill Nelson, 'Volunteer Slavery' I still wince. Yanked off car crashes, fires and dog attacks, I was anxious to prove  

"I can't condone what (Harold McKinney) did, but I can't condemn it, either." -- Todman Emmons of Northside Vigilantism is a bastardization of justice. It is arrogant. It doesn't wait for outco  

Simba's understudy is in repose. Brandon -- a beautiful, 28-year-old, lithe black man with a lighter-than-café au lait complexion -- relaxes in Suite 1606 after a Sunday performance of The Lio  

I live in column time. My clocks tic snatches of conversations and tocks moments when humanity notices itself. Suddenly war, AIDS, famine and empires make sense. This is dedicated to all those time  

The stale-ass economic boycott of Cincinnati ain't never been about race. Two years on and we're poised at the threshold of a class war. The boycott's acid-refluxed up our classism. Some blacks don  

Bring me men/bring me men/men with empires in their purpose. -- "Empires," Lamya 1. Twenty-five day war Palm Sunday Jesus walked palms Baghdad goes to town 2. Nauseated now unemployed unde  

"I gave my promise to the world/ and the world followed me here." -- "Testimonial," Rita Dove This is the antidote to war. Burgeoning into poetic brilliance, Rita Dove thought all writers were  

Riding shotgun in 24 feet of honkin' flatbed truck with musicians Jake Speed & the Freddies jostling in the back, on its surface the 2003 Opening Day Parade looked like its usual annual self. By 11  

I left during intermission. I got half a play buzzing through my brain. Growing up I couldn't understand why my mother, born in 1934, never got excited about TV movies and documentaries that retr  

It was only last Friday night that Joe and Carla Tucker were talking about how sweet 22-year-old Gillespie McPherson was. Less than 24 hours later, McPherson bled to death in the brightest sunlight   

Slightly tardy, baseball legend Dave Parker and basketball great Oscar Robertson ambled in and took their places during the pre-gala class photo. Marjorie B. Parham, publisher emeritus of The Cinci