Metering is ON

fountain

John W. Fountain biography

A native son of Chicago’s West Side, John W. Fountain is an award-winning journalist, professor, and author of the memoir True Vine: A Young Black …Read More

Search recent columns

More Columns

I am Trayvon’s father

I am not Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin’s father. I am a provider. Producer. Protector. I am not just someone’s baby’s daddy. I am a father. I stand as a man, in the light of fatherhood, charged with rearing my children. Ordained to speak …

We can’t blame ‘whitey’

‘Are you paid to make white people feel better? . . . I’m certain that these writings are all made to guarantee your longevity with the newspaper.” That’s from a reader responding to last week’s column. Now hear this: Dear Blacker Than Thou, They don’t …

Black-on-black victims could fill our stadiums

Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict. Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 …

I am angry, at so many, over Trayvon’s death

I am angry, so angry. I confess this to a friend, though the serene tone with which I share my feelings bears no hint of the rage inside. I am angry over Trayvon Martin. Incensed that a man — white or black—could shoot and kill …

A ‘saint’ tries to reel in the ‘sinner’ — uh, me

This is my conversation with a “saint,” the name church folks affectionately call other believers. No one is named here. The irony sad. The story true. We greet with a hug. I prefer a handshake. I’d rather see the knife coming. “So-o-o,” the saint says, …

Don’t be ‘appalled’; teach children how to succeed

‘Mr. Fountain, I was quite appalled to find your article plastered to the bulletin board in the staff mailroom at the south suburban high school where I work. . . . I hope that you will strongly reconsider being the poster ‘boy’ for white Americans …

Black history is nation’s story every month of year

The music is a haunting time machine to the past. Sprinkled with freedom songs and the a cappella serenade of a people too long denied, it is the score for stories and lessons that need to be told and retold for generations. Such is the …

We must face hard truths and stop making excuses

“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves.” Harriet Tubman The state named him Joseph. The baby boy lay in the nursery — born enslaved — at a West Side hospital, where as a …

Dear mama, speak truth to your wayward sons

“As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one’s aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and …

Don’t give up — hope doesn’t have to die in the ’hood

Disclaimer: I am not a “Super Negro.” I was born a son of the ghetto, joint heir to poverty, the firstborn of a 17-year-old black mother married to a black male, sometimes mechanic, 22. My father was an alcoholic. This was how he lived. It …

We, African Americans, continue to fail ourselves

“…The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.” — Mis-Education of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson Amazing to me still, nearly 80 years since Carter G. …

Let’s hope Dist. 227 learns from ridiculous and costly legal battle

Nearly two years, more than $100,000 in legal fees and apparently 14 brand new toilets later, the Rich Township High School District 227 school board appears to have finally come to its senses. And yet, the whole mess still stinks. The south suburban school board …

Tebow inspires in sport of shameless celebration

LOL! “Tebow is puttin’ it on ’em . . . In Jesus name!” I thumbed a Facebook posting quickly on my handheld while watching the Broncos-vs.-Steelers game, giddy over the success of the young NFL quarterback who has taken a ribbing for his open — …

How Muhammad Ali made this little kid feel big

In a treasured photograph, I stand smiling widely next to the champ, my brown fist to his face, his to mine. I wear a dark suit. The champ wears a white shirt, striped tie and his signature lip-biting glare. Meeting him years ago, he seemed …

Even hair weaves call for honesty

A-weave-e-derci! It’s been an unbeweavable year. This despite the heat I took this summer for having the audacity as a man — no less a bald black man — to dare speak my mind about the explosion of hair weaves of assorted varieties worn by …

The children die, their blood cries, under a school-day sun

There are children here, though scarred and battered. Big dreams shattered. Big-city tattered. Ghetto fractured. And sometimes, all that matters here is getting home safe each day, under each new school-day sun. Escaping bloody pools that run, sometimes like rivers here, on the darkest side …

Tying my son’s shoes, worried if I have cancer

I knelt on the office floor of my son’s school, tying his shoes tightly, a lot on my mind. Yet, all I could do was wait. My boy had called home earlier. He’d forgotten his saxophone and needed it for practice after school. The secretary …

< Previous
  • 1
  • 2
Next >