by Elvis Mitchell

What is a Black List? Historically, Americans know exactly what it is: a group of people punished by being marginalized and denied work or social approval, generally for their having taken political stands. And, for African-Americans, it's yet another slap at the word black, which includes such slurs as black sheep and blackguard. The Simpsons Movie cleverly takes aim at the tired attitude toward black when Mayor Quimby is forced to deal with an emergency by declaring "code black," and Lenny groans, "Black? That's the worst color!" Another Clinton -- George, Parliament-Funkadelic founder -- bounced the taint when he proclaimed in song that he wanted to "Paint the White House Black."

With the serious attention directed at Senator Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, the concept doesn't seem as much like the dance floor science fiction that Dr. Funkenstein chuckled his way through. Although the creakily derogatory stamp on the word black predates creation of these United States, the negative connotation is the reason why, until the 1960s, respectable people of color didn't want to be called black; it was nothing short of an insult. Not until race pride shocked the country out of its ignoring and ignorant attitudes about the impact of, well, blacks on America, did the word take on a fresher and desirable aspect for many African-Americans, especially the young; the Afrocentric revolutionaries and the integrationist civil rights workers alike found something desirable about being known as black. For years before the 1960s, of course, it had the transgressive allure of cool. An underground recycling of the concept was taking place -- in those halcyon days before cable TV, the internet, and bar codes burned onto youth culture so that its shopping habits could be tracked and exploited -- in the shady bunkers beneath the Establishment, where jazz and blues musicians plied their trade for an appreciative audience of freethinkers who were disinclined to be described as Negroes, the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and a five-cent tip.

For me, the real question is, What's in a Black List? All of those past associations, as grim and lethal as an undertow, are to be obliterated by the new implications of the term that we're creating here. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and I decided that The Black List would be made up of portraits in both senses of the word: pictorial and verbal. What I didn't realize until we undertook the Black List is our essential similarity of interest; we are both primarily curious and pointed toward finding ways to get people to reveal themselves -- he with his camera, and me through questions. The results that we managed for The Black List come from the living-portraiture approach, done with a formality and familiarity that I think is rare and thrilling. The subjects reacted to this technique with a confidence born of esteem for every part of their lives, rather than just their areas of endeavor or expertise. The relationship is seen in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's smiling as he talks in depth about Harlem, Miles Davis, and his fascination with American history, as well as his days on the basketball court for UCLA, Milwaukee, and the Lakers.

Here, the term Black List becomes a reboot, a gathering of some of the most capable and, just as important, determined African-Americans, whose work and careers leave a trail of inspiration in fields ranging from politics and letters to civil rights and corporate responsibility. What they all have in common is a kind of activism, furthering the cause of African-American visibility while not shirking devotion to family and morality; that tradition of "each one...