Black Power

"Spider-Man 3" introduces us to Black Spidey, who, in his new ebony uniform, is angry, jealous, cruel, cocky, vengeful and vain. That's right - Black Spider-Man is Bad Spider-Man, which sounds like a job for Al Sharpton. Really, though, the new Black Spider-Man is just an exaggerated version of the old Red and Blue, with heightened powers that raise new questions about what it really means to be strong. The movie opens with midnight screenings tonight. As "Spider-Man 3" begins, Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire)

As the '80s end, one of the first to jump aboard the '70s love train bound for Nostalgiaville is, believe it or not, Schoolly D, the pungent pundit from Parkside. Schoolly, a.k.a. Jesse B. Weaver Jr., who prides himself on his reputation as a gangster of rap, reports that his latest album, Am I Black Enough for You? (RCA/Jive), is a throwback to the '70s. "I was listening to a lot of '70s (stuff) and it made it onto the album," he says, speaking by phone earlier this week.

Molefi Kete Asante remembers the voice of Kwame Ture. "Kwame Ture was perhaps the most electrifying voice that I heard in my youth," the Temple University professor said. "He made a tremendous impression on me at an early age. " "Kwame Ture at 19 was a national leader and he was a national leader for the cause of black people, for black education, for black students demonstrating against the war in Vietnam, participating actively in the democracy movement in this country and also internationalizing the movement for justice.

For Princeton University's Jewish community, tonight's speech by Kwame Toure - the black activist better known as Stokely Carmichael - is an unsettling case of deja vu. Last February, tensions arose between campus blacks and Jews when the Organization of Black Unity (OBU), which says it represents most of the university's approximately 300 black students, scheduled a speech by Minister Louis Farrakhan, the controversial Nation of Islam leader, as part of Black History Month. The selection of Minister Farrakhan, whose speech eventually was canceled, angered Jewish students who considered him anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.

Maybe America has finally begun to weary of the annual exercise in corrective pedagogy, Black History Month. This year, fewer programs, speeches and articles extolled African-American history. Only a peculiar symbiosis of circumstances inspired this column on black history: Time magazine's cover story on Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and recently published books by Kevin Phillips and Ellis Cose. These writings are conclusive proof that history is repeating itself in 1994, as an Athenian historian predicted in 411 B.C. "I shall be content," wrote Thucydides, "if those who pronounce my history useful . . . give events as they really did happen and as they are very likely . . . to repeat themselves at some future time.

Six feet, five inches of black power. The figure towered, the mighty baritone resounded over the teeming parking lot. It was 1968 and the Lion of Zion - Zion Baptist Church pastor Leon Sullivan - was professing his own mighty stature and mightier hopes for the black community. Self-help. Marketable skills. Black ownership. Black power - that part he had down. But black power without green power is no power. That's what they told him, a bit condescendingly, when he started making his pitch to local businesses that he wanted to engage in a partnership to train and hire Philadelphia minorities.

When most of us measure the effort by blacks to enter mainstream America during the 1960s, the leaders who come most easily to mind are the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the NAACP's Roy Wilkins, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond and perhaps a few others. It is regrettable that the contributions of militants such as Stokely Carmichael are so often overlooked. During the tumultuous '60s, he was often left to battle at the periphery of the civil rights movement. Somehow, however, he managed to make significant contributions to blacks and to America as well.

City editor Mike Freeman announced that he already had a cast of Cecil B. DeMille proportions working on the mayoral debate, so let's add just one brief note in passing. Before last night, many voters of the Tweedledum-Tweedledee school of thought were citing the time factor as the tie-breaker. In other words, they were saying they'd vote for W. Wilson Goode over Frank L. Rizzo, if only because Goode could have but four more years in office, whereas Rizzo would be entitled to go for eight.

They live in different neighborhoods and come from different age groups, but Stephan Cullins and Fred Mayes have much in common: Both have lost loved ones to the violence that seethes in the city. Yesterday, both men answered the "Call to Action," joining the throngs of African American men at a rally in North Philadelphia to volunteer their services as neighborhood peacekeepers. "I'm trying to find out anything I can do to help out my community," said Mayes, 39, of Mount Airy, as he stood in a line that snaked around Temple University's Liacouras Center.

THE GENTLE Giant, the Shepherd, Father of the Black Power Movement in Philadelphia, a Disturbing Prophet, Father Paul . . . These are just some of the phrases people used to describe Father Paul M. Washington. As his son, it was as if I was watching God in action. I saw how God used my dad to do his will, how he used him to take care of the "Other Sheep. " Now I want to remind everyone about the man whom we hope to honor by changing the name of Diamond Street (the home of my father's pulpit, the Church of the Advocate at 18th and Diamond)

Museumgoers will have the opportunity to brush up on a lot of dramatic American history around town this spring, with major exhibitions and events covering the Civil War, U.S. spycraft, the countercultural epicenter of 1968, the antilynching writer Ida B. Wells, and the black presence on the Delaware River - as both cargo and seafarers. In addition, the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, which originally blasted through town two years ago, is back for a month from the end of March to the end of April.

Dance of the lowercase companies! Kate Watson-Wallacer and Jaamil Kosoko, dancer/choreographers who recently formed anonymous bodies, and Megan Bridge and Peter Price, who make up a team they call fidget, have paired up this weekend at Christ Church Neighborhood House. Both partnerships engage in dance theater, live music, on-site installation, multimedia, social justice and political themes, and audience involvement. In a trend that's been growing, if diminutively, they titled their show "us. " Another trend that's been around for a while has the performers on stage and going through their paces before the show begins.

The year 1965 was remarkable for Irene Hill-Smith. She spent 50 days in a South Jersey hospital after a car hit her as she was getting into a parked car. Her first hospital stint ended March 31, but she was hospitalized for complications from the injury Aug. 17. Despite all that, The Inquirer reported at the time, it was a year of accomplishments. She was elected president of the New Jersey NAACP, one of the first women so elected across the nation. And at the 1965 national NAACP convention, she was named president of the organization's Northeastern region, covering Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and all of New England.

I ASKED A 17-year-old I know what he thought about Kwanzaa and he said, "That Jewish holiday?" Uh, no. Clearly, his high school hasn't embraced the multicultural thing and isn't teaching students about the 44-year-old Afrocentric holiday. But I don't knock his ignorance because the truth is that Kwanzaa has never caught on with the majority of black Americans. At the same time, though, it has grown in mainstream acceptance as evidenced by the Kwanzaa postal stamps and greeting cards.

RE STAN Hochman's article on the 1968 summer Olympics: This may sound like "some kind of ill-conceived counterpoint," but I'm not going to be as proud of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists in protest at the '68 Summer Games when everybody and their grandmother was on the protest bandwagon doing the same thing. Or at least as proud as I was of George Foreman, who raised an American flag when nobody else had the guts to. And the next time you write an article and feel the need to throw a jab at a flag-waver, it's probably a good idea to not print it on Veterans Day. Neil Collins Havertown

The comments on racism of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., deemed so inflammatory that his former congregant Barack Obama was forced to address them, brought back a flood of memories for me. I was first exposed to "black liberation theology," the apparent basis for many of Wright's most biting remarks on race, while a student at, of all places, a small, predominantly white college in the Midwest. Baker University, the oldest four-year college in Kansas, had only about 800 students in 1971; fewer than 60 of us were African American, but that was the most black students ever at the school founded in 1858.

They live in different neighborhoods and come from different age groups, but Stephan Cullins and Fred Mayes have much in common: Both have lost loved ones to the violence that seethes in the city. Yesterday, both men answered the "Call to Action," joining the throngs of African American men at a rally in North Philadelphia to volunteer their services as neighborhood peacekeepers. "I'm trying to find out anything I can do to help out my community," said Mayes, 39, of Mount Airy, as he stood in a line that snaked around Temple University's Liacouras Center.

"Spider-Man 3" introduces us to Black Spidey, who, in his new ebony uniform, is angry, jealous, cruel, cocky, vengeful and vain. That's right - Black Spider-Man is Bad Spider-Man, which sounds like a job for Al Sharpton. Really, though, the new Black Spider-Man is just an exaggerated version of the old Red and Blue, with heightened powers that raise new questions about what it really means to be strong. The movie opens with midnight screenings tonight. As "Spider-Man 3" begins, Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire)

The Rev. Paul M. Washington, the activist Episcopal priest from the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia, is remembered as a dynamic spiritual leader, an unwavering voice for social justice, and a champion of the oppressed. And if his family and community activists have their way, the man who died in 2002 at age 81 and who was hailed as the "conscience of the city" will have a major street named in his honor. Since September, Washington's family and a broad group of community activists have conducted a petition drive to rename Diamond Street between Broad Street and 33d Street as Father Paul M. Washington Avenue.

THE GENTLE Giant, the Shepherd, Father of the Black Power Movement in Philadelphia, a Disturbing Prophet, Father Paul . . . These are just some of the phrases people used to describe Father Paul M. Washington. As his son, it was as if I was watching God in action. I saw how God used my dad to do his will, how he used him to take care of the "Other Sheep. " Now I want to remind everyone about the man whom we hope to honor by changing the name of Diamond Street (the home of my father's pulpit, the Church of the Advocate at 18th and Diamond)