was just reading of Baldwin's influence on Maya Angelou before I logged onto here. You must read Go Tell It On the Mountain, also.
I don't have any recommendatons for you on the MSTM; at one time, I looked seriously into the Nation of Islam, but JW's got me first!
Does that football player, Randle-El, subscribe to that movement
I just Googled him as that's a good question. From the results it appears he grew up and remains Pentecostal, but his family has a Muslim background, hence the name.
I'll get to the Mountain book eventually, I just have so many other books vying for my attention. The verse, I can't recall either in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes on the making of many books, rings true. I bought a book recently released on the Black P Stones and Jeff Fort, and I was already vaguely familiar with their story. I already knew the P Stones in Los Angeles weren't the orginal, but I've never read anything that really went into the history of South Side Chicago like that. Check this out Syl, I bought a book on the P Stones, and a new Baldwin book, and guess what else I got? A book on the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Crazy mixture of reading, but ohhh I'm enjoying it. It's a breath of fresh air compared to the WT's literature. I feel almost as if I'm going home sometimes reading all this stuff. But definately, I'll get Tell It On the Mountain in the near future.