Apartheid in the US is usually associated with the southern states but it was alive and well in Fort Worth, Texas when Ornette Coleman was born there in 1930.   Sean Sheehan   Where people lived, what bus they travelled on, school or hospital attended, all depended on skin colour. […]

The esteem accorded to the UK’s 94-year-old monarch has much to do with her longevity. People well into their eighties and nineties tend not to provoke visceral antipathy to their very existence. It takes a Margaret Thatcher or General Pinochet to achieve that level of distinction.   Sean Sheehan   […]

When Cassius Clay, a descendant of a slave, became heavyweight boxing champion of the world in 1964 he rejected his slave name (‘I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it’) and, before becoming Muhammad Ali, referred to himself as Cassius X.  Another Black American, Malcolm Little, also rejected his […]