Harper Barnes, a former writer and editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is the author of Blue Monday (Patrice), a mystery set among the gangsters and jazz musicians of mid-1930s Kansas City, and Never Been a Time (Walker), a history of the East St. Louis race riot of 1917.
What is Christ the King United Church of Christ, then, and how do we understand its history and current form as part of a living narrative of urban segregation? Current members, committed as they are to the progressive political witness and focus on a ministry to the African-American community, are not just about that. The congregation claims all of its history: German, White, liberal Protestant, spirit-filled, and unashamedly Black.
At the time of that 2012 election, Claire McCaskill and her campaign were circumspect about the motive behind taking out ads during the Republican primary accusing Akin of being too conservative for Missouri, but she lays it all out in her very readable, and revealing, political memoir.
Stanley Crouch gives us the best biography yet of Charlie Parker, the first jazz musician to let the saxophone lead the way, and the seminal musician who could make his horn sound “sweet,” yet “devoid of pity.”