"No pork on my fork"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 14:21:58 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>At 2:22 AM -0400 6/20/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>Ludacris might be referencing an earlier rap song -- Big Daddy Kane's
>>"Young Gifted and Black" (not to be confused with Nina Simone's
>>similarly titled song) from his 1989 album _It's A Big Daddy Thing_.
>
>Or with Lorraine ("Raisin in the Sun") Hansberry's 1969 posthumous
>collection of almost the same name (_To Be Young, Gifted and Black_;
>Hansberry herself never made it even to middle age, succumbing to
>cancer).   I'm assuming her book predated Nina Simone's song (both of
>them preceding Aretha's cover by a couple of years), but I don't know
>for sure.  (There's also a web site attributing the phrase to Elton
>John, but I suspect that isn't quite right.)

-----
http://www.chipublib.org/003cpl/oboc/raisin/biography.html
The title is taken from a speech given by Hansberry in May 1964 to winners
of a United Negro Fund writing competition:
"....though it be thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and
gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic, to be young, gifted
and black!"
-----
http://www.nathanielturner.com/weldonirvine.htm
As [songwriter Weldon] Irvine tells it, Simone was friends with the
playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin In the Sun. When
Hansberry's autobiography was turned into a Broadway play, Simone attended
the premier of the production, which was titled To Be Young, Gifted, and
Black, and was inspired to write a song. She asked Irvine to write the
lyrics. She gave him the title, played the song's melody, and told Irvine
she wanted lyrics that "will make black children all over the world feel
good about themselves forever."
-----

(I'm partial to the 1970 cover version by the reggae duo Bob & Marcia.)


--Ben Zimmer