Hip-hop journalist, activist Bakari Kitwana to speak at Wright State

The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture, which focuses on young African Americans born after the Civil Rights Movement, has been adopted as a course book in classrooms at over 100 colleges and universities.

On Wednesday, May 4, at 4 p.m. at the Millett Hall Atrium, the Wright State University community will have a unique opportunity to meet Bakari Kitwana and listen to his presentation on Hip-Hop: The Love, Struggle, and the Future.

Kitwana is a journalist, activist and political analyst. He has provided commentary on politics and youth culture on CNN, FOX News, C-Span and PBS, among others.

Kitwana is currently Senior Media Fellow at the Harvard Law–based think tank, The Jamestown Project, and the executive director of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogue on Hip-Hop. The group conducts town hall meetings across the country on difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop generation.

Kitwana’s 2002 book The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture, which focuses on young African Americans born after the Civil Rights Movement, has been adopted as a course book in classrooms at over 100 colleges and universities.

Kitwana published his first book, The Rap on Gangsta Rap, in 1994. Since then, he’s been the editorial director of Third World Press, executive editor of the hip-hop magazine The Source and co-founder of the first National Hip-Hop Political Convention. The event brought over 4,000 young people to Newark, New Jersey, in 2004 to create and endorse a political agenda for the hip-hop generation.

The Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., and The Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center are sponsoring this speaking event.