These are hard times. Generational shifts and a crushing economic recession has forced many black-owned businesses to merge or shut down. George Boling, our Chicago-based Game Changer Fellow, caught up with Dr. Haki Madhubuti to learn about the secret to his success and how he’s maintained his legendary black-owned publishing company for more than forty years.
For Haki R. Madhubuti, author, educator, poet, founder/ chairman of Third World Press, the nation’s largest independent black-owned press, times like these force us to ask tough questions, such as who really controls our images and culture and how do we sustain self-determination?
Says Dr. Madhubuti: “Any people who are in control of their own cultural imperatives can define the world from their own perspective.” Dr. Madhubuti has published 24 books and is one of the world’s best-selling authors of poetry and non-fiction, with books in print in excess of 3 million. His well-known book, “Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?: The African American Family in Transition (1990)” has sold over 1,000,000 copies.
We salute the work of Dr. Haki Madhubuti, a true game changer.