Cosmos-conceived. Earth-incarnated. District of Columbia-born. Maryland-raised. Storyteller. Taurus. Writer. Podcaster. Television producer. Foodie. Filmmaker.
We have been podcasting The Robert Wesley Branch Show since 2010. These are our theme songs for the podcast: written, composed, produced and performed by the late and very great, Ms. Mai Maiesha Rashad, who left this realm in June of 2020.
This is the story of the discovery of the writings collectively known as The Essene Gospel of Peace.
On February 22, 2020, we lost B. Smith (Barbara Elaine Smith 1949-2020) to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The author of three lifestyle-cookbooks, B. Smith was a wife, stepmother, former model, actress, singer, restauranteur, TV host, entrepreneur and lifestyle brand. She took to another level the time-honored domestic work that Black women have done from their beginnings in this country, bringing her art and style of homemaking and entertaining to a mass audience, and making us particularly proud in the process. We loved eating at her restaurants. We loved seeing her on television and magazine covers. We love, respect, honor and remember you – Ms. B. Smith – and want nothing more for you than to rest in peace, power and paradise!
WASHINGTON – September 6, 1992. My first (and so far, only!) published opinion piece in The Washington Post.
February 1 – the birthdate of Langston Hughes (1901-1967) – traditionally marks the kickoff of “Black-History-is-American-History-is-World-History Month” – which is, perhaps, a good time to reflect on the life, work and words of a brother who, rightfully so, enjoys such high esteem within the culture. So, let us, brothers and sisters, reflect on a piece of poetry by Brother Langston – a piece that was written in 1935 and first published in the July 1936 issue of Esquire magazine.
These are some of the deep roots of race and racism in America today.
Telling our stories.
All we really have is our story. And it (our story) is ours to tell: when we want to tell it, how we want to tell it, if we want to tell it. Ms. Maya Angelou (1928-2014) taught that lesson very well.
By Robert Wesley Branch We are responsible for what we know and how we live. There are people who you see every day who don’t have a clue as to their purpose for being. They don’t know why they came here. These family members, friends, co-workers and complete strangers can more easily tell you what they do for a living, how much they earn each year, what they possess, and they can no doubt eloquently describe for you their vacation plans, but they will most probably stop cold if you ask them: Who are you? What is your purpose? Why were you born? In any corporation or enterprise, you will find some whose job is their dream, some whose job is their passion, and others whose job is but their job. I suppose, on some level, for some people, it is indeed a blessing to possess a position in which you don’t really have to work. This lack of obligation or challenge is what, I guess, distinguishes a position from a job. For the uninspired, a position is ideal; for the visionary, a job is not enough; for the dreamer, nothing less than the dream will do. The challenge for Read More ...
“This text, one of the undisputed masterpieces of ancient Egyptian literature, dates possibly from as early as the late Sixth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom…The text was composed under the guise of an elderly vizier who was on the verge of retirement and desirous of handing his position on to his son who also bore the name Ptahhotep.” – William Kelly Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003), 129.
My favorite writer – ever!
These are the most watched videos on the RWB YouTube Channel.
WASHINGTON – September 6, 1992. My first (and so far, only!) published opinion piece in The Washington Post.
Through the pages of Manly Palmer Hall’s (1901-1990) two books – The Secret Teachings of All Ages and The Lost Keys of Freemasonry – we explore the origins of Prince Hall Freemasonry.
Know thyself, perfect your spiritual gifts, pursue your higher life purpose, stay single-mindedly focused on your mission, resist fear, turn away from distraction, and walk out your High Calling with gratitude, humility and joy. And all of that, brothers and sisters, creates an aura of magic around you that parts the way before you and has your enemies fleeing from you in all directions, attracting money and opportunity to you from all corners of the world.
BETHESDA – September 10, 2001. Ms. Iyanla Vanzant left a voice-mail message at my office. At that time, I was an executive producer in Primetime Programming at Discovery Networks. About a week earlier, on a Monday morning, in that very office, I watched the premiere of Iyanla, the Barbara Walters-produced national talk show featuring Iyanla Vanzant. And I wrote lots of notes (and sent them to an email address in the end credits), reacting and responding to what I’d seen in that first show. Iyanla called to discuss my notes. We talked for hours, well into the night. I remember my feet being up on the desk when the cleaning crew vacuumed my office floor that night. That hours-long phone call was the beginning of a professional partnership (and personal friendship) that has lasted over 20 years. In January of 2013, in association with Harpo Productions, I began my work as a consulting producer on Iyanla, Fix My Life, for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Traveling the country producing the series, I shot a lot of behind-the-scenes footage that I shared on YouTube in a playlist titled On the Road with Iyanla Vanzant. Take a look.
WASHINGTON – October 16, 1995. In the Company of My Brothers. Words and Images by Robert Wesley Branch. My father reached into his briefcase and pulled out a red-black-and-green button: Million Man March, Day of Atonement, I Want to be in THAT Number!, October 16, 1995, it read. “It’s for you,” he told me. “I saw them and I thought about you. Got me one too,” he smiled, sitting at the kitchen table. Two days before the Million Man March (MMM), I still hadn’t decided to go. I had purposely not watched the news or listened to the radio in the weeks before because I was well familiar with the mainstream’s take on anything remotely related to Louis Farrakhan. Part of my resistance to attending the March was a deep-seated distrust of Black men. I could only hope the gay brothers wouldn’t become targets for their straight counterparts; and that the Christian brothers wouldn’t become whipping posts for the Nation’s Muslim brothers. I was weary of the divisive name-calling; fearful of the spirit of machismo that has separated and alienated so many of us for so long. I was 29. Today, all these years later, now in my late fifties, I see this behavior I describe Read More ...
What is a “conscious” father? Who is that brother? And what is his story? What is the impact on the child – when the father is not in the home, and even more broadly, when the father is not in the life of the son and the daughter – how is that absence affecting the emotional, psychological and spiritual lives of our brothers and sisters? What becomes of a tribe in trauma? Father absence is a trauma to the tribe, brothers and sisters. And that trauma affects every village, everywhere within the tribe.
Reflections on the fishers of men and women – and the souls we catch in the doing of our ministry, also known as our Higher Life Purpose. When and how do we release the souls we catch? In other words, people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Now, how many times have we heard or said that? Are we letting go of – releasing – those souls whose frequency and vibration we have transcended? Also reflecting on the principle of “Be Impeccable with Your Word,” from Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements.
Excerpts from some of the books I’ve read, studied and recorded. Timeless. Sacred. Wisdom.
Let me tell you about a gentleman who was born nearly 100 years ago (in Framingham, Massachusetts) to Italian immigrant parents. He was the editor of his high school newspaper and had plans to study journalism in college, only his mother died of a heart attack and his college plans were sidetracked. Instead, he went to work, for a time, in a paper factory, and he soon joined the United States Army Air Corps, became a military officer and a bombardier in World War II. After leaving the military, he became an insurance salesman. His life eventually brought him to the state of Ohio, to the city of Cleveland, to alcoholism and on one winter morning, standing outside of a pawn shop, in the most dangerous and dirty and sleazy part of Cleveland, with the rain falling on his shoulder-length hair, this 30-something-year-old man peered through the window into a pawn shop and saw a gun for sale, on the shelf, for sale $29. And as he looked at that gun, he thought about how his drinking had cost him everything that really mattered: his wife, his daughter, his job, his home, his self-esteem. And he reached into his rain-soaked pocket and Read More ...
“Bad blood between father and son” – that’s how the police described the events at the Marvin Gaye Sr. household on that day in Los Angeles. Marvin Pentz Gaye Sr. shot and killed his son, Marvin Gaye Jr., on April 1, 1984. Marvin Gaye Jr. (1939-1984) was shot twice with a gun that he bought for his father, who used that gift of a gun to end his son’s life. Y’all ever heard that term the elders say: “I brought you into this world – and I’ll take you out.” That appears to have been the case in this particular father-son story. It is a very long way from being born in Washington, D.C. in 1939, to being shot twice by your father in a house in Los Angeles in 1984. That, brothers and sisters, is a long and winding road. Was there undiagnosed mental illness in Marvin Gaye? Brother Marvin is one man in a very long line of brothers who have experienced chronic chemical depression – many of those brothers were experiencing undiagnosed depression. What lessons can we learn from this tragic turn of events in Brother Marvin’s life? Likewise, our dearly departed sister, Ms. Phyllis Hyman (1949-1995), Read More ...
In 1994, author Malidoma Patrice Somé (1956-2021) published his book, Of Water and the Spirit. Brother Malidoma was from the central African country of Burkina Faso, born into the Dagara tribe. On page 23 of his book, Brother Malidoma writes: “If one obediently walks their life path, they will become an elder somewhere in their late forties or early fifties. Graduating to this new status, however, depends on one’s good track record. A male elder is the head of his family. He has the power to bless, and the power to withhold blessing. This ability comes to him from his ancestors, to whom he is very close, and he follows their wisdom in counseling his larger family.” If you live long enough and if you take notes while you’re living; if you read and review and revise your notes and learn your lessons; if somewhere along your journey you find the language to express who you are in the world and what you stand for – in the family, in the tribe; if you walk in this way and if you live long enough to reach your late forties and early fifties, Brother Malidoma teaches that you will, eventually, become an elder.
We all need somebody to lean on.
Many people knew her as the “First Lady of Go-Go” music. I knew her as a jazz singer, spiritual teacher, a sister and my very good friend of 29 years. There are those rare and unique people who come into your life and teach you things you didn’t even know were important for your evolution; they deposit seeds into your unconscious self long before you are awakened; they “see” into what your soul is becoming and water you with Love. Ms. Maiesha Rashad was that for me. From the darkness, she brought forth the Light. She left us on June 15, 2020. May her music never end.
A roundtable of brothers having a conversation about the physical, emotional and spiritual presence (and absence) of the men in our families, as well as a discussion on six male archetypes: the Wounded Man, the Common Man, the Negative Alpha Man, the Angry Old Man, the Sexually Addictive Man, and the Broken Man, as presented in the book Man Heal Thyself: Journey to Optimal Wellness by Queen Afua.
Through the pages of Queen Afua’s 2012 book, Man Heal Thyself: Journey to Optimal Wellness, a roundtable of brothers are answering the question: “What kind of man am !?” Chapter 1: The Wounded Man. Chapter 2: Enter the Wellness Warrior. Chapter 3: The Healing Powers of the Elements. Chapter 4: Man Heal Thyself. Chapter 5: Man Heal Thyself/Man of Vitality (Arit 1-7). Chapter 6: Supreme Man of Optimal Wellness (Arit 8-12). Chapter 7: Final Thoughts and Comments.
San Francisco liberal – used as an epithet. Progressive – hurled as a pejorative. Dumb. Low IQ. DEI hire. Communist. Bitch. These are all attacks hurled by candidates and campaigns in order to win an election (or at least to win the news cycle!) – all made with the intention of dismissing the seriousness, eroding the viability and demeaning the character, judgment and decision-making of the opponent running for the same office. Some people wear these labels proudly, taking them as battle scars and are not in the least bit insulted by them. Others receive these insults as deeply personal attacks and fight back by devastatingly hitting below the belt. During an election cycle, we see this every day. For those of us who are not politicians, who are just out here being humans each day, how do we respond to the insults we receive? To react is to rely on and lead with emotion in our words and deeds. To respond is to carefully craft an intention and to consciously create, through our words and deeds, thoughts and behaviors that spiritually govern matter. In other words, we are conscious of Ephesians 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and Read More …
You can make the right decision. And you can make the decision right. So many political analysts, pundits and opinion writers (myself among them!) were expecting, even hoping that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would be selected by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to be her pick for Vice President. For some of them, in the wake of her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that hope has turned to cope. Most of you know what it’s like to be the hope of your family. You may be pursuing a career path in an occupation in which no one in the family before you has ever practiced and succeeded. Your income may be above all the rest of the kinfolks. You may have purchased the first home the bloodline has ever known, elevating the whole tribe from generational urban renters to suburban owners. Because of your line of work, you may have traveled the world in business and first class. You may arrive at the airport on the opposite coast, to a tuxedo-clad gentleman holding a small placard with your name on it, waiting to escort you to an idling sedan, that whisks you to and from the airport in the Read More …
Everything is energy. Nothing rests. Everything moves. Everything vibrates. Political scientists who write opinion pieces for national newspapers, who offer regular and constant punditry on podcasts and cable news network TV shows – these are the folks who eat, sleep and drink politics as a passion and for profit. Even as this media class broadcasts and livestreams their views to the public, it often feels like they are, in essence, speaking primarily to themselves, amongst themselves. Tuning in to them is, for the wise, a measured practice, taken in balance with the wider realities of average people in everyday life. In other words, listen to them critically, carefully and in context. In this presidential election season, the political science of it all, for this political observer, takes a backseat to the spirit of it all. Science, analysis and strategy originate in the left brain. Creativity, passion and imagination reside in the right brain. The left brain is linear, mathematical, practical, always in control, realistic, ordered and logical. Much of the punditry of political scientists comes from the left hemisphere of their brains – the daily and hourly analysis of trending in polls is the demonstration of their left brains constantly Read More …
The older I get, the more labels I leave behind. Human beings understand our world through the stories we tell and teach about ourselves and others. We write and speak about the ideas and concepts we were taught and have come to learn and think we understand; the beliefs and traditions we have inherited and either outgrown or deepened. Within the American melting pot, there is an alphabet soup we use to communicate with (and to understand) one another. The Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer community has their call letters: LGBTQ. The formerly enslaved have been called Colored, Negro, Black and African American. American Descendants of Slavery are now, in some socio-political and academic circles, referred to as ADOS, as distinct from Black African immigrants to the United States and Black immigrants from the Caribbean. In conversation and debate, political scientists refer to themselves and speak of others as being on the Right or Left, identifying as Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Radical, Revolutionary, Nationalist or Separatist – left wing, right wing, far left or far right. Partisans vote for either the Democratic or Republican parties, with others standing outside of that two-party system as registered Independents. Fascists. Marxists. Communists. We study and understand history through Read More …
Do you hear what I hear? Over the course of her vast and storied career, when broadcaster and journalist Barbara Walters (1929-2022) asked pointed questions to world leaders, did opinion writers of her day characterize her questions as “accusatory?” Perhaps they did and I was too young to be paying close attention at the time. No doubt Ms. Walters, unquestionably a pioneer and trailblazer in the field of journalism, faced her share of criticism as a woman asking tough questions to high-profile and prominent men in politics, sports and entertainment. Had she been a woman of color perhaps the criticisms of her may have been even more fierce. The tone of ABC News’ Rachel Scott’s opening question to former President Donald Trump at Wednesday’s National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Chicago was not (to my ear!) “accusatory,” as described by Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal “Declarations” opinion piece, “The Fight of Trump’s Political Life: Kamala Harris has the wind at her back. Her strengths became clearer in the last two weeks.” (August 1, 2024. 5:52 p.m. ET) In case you missed it, here is Rachel Scott’s opening question in its entirety. “Hi, Mr. Trump. Rachel Scott. Read More …