Rap tour hits DuBois house

University alumnus Maurice Henderson, executive director of the National Black Authors Tour, has written an off-Broadway play and appeared on television's Politically Incorrect and the Ricki Lake Show. But on Friday night, Henderson brought his tour to the slightly less visible confines of the W.E.B. Dubois College House as part of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity's Black History Month celebration. Entitled "To Be Young, Black, Gifted With Rap," the event featured spoken-word artists as well as a comedian and a rapper. The brothers held the event in hopes of "improv[ing] the relations between different races on campus," said Alpha Phi Alpha brother Richard Adzei, a College sophomore. Eric Webb -- who has written two poetry collections, Coming of Age: The Waking of Sleeping Giants and The Recipe for Revolution -- read several of his own poems at the event. "We want to educate as well as entertain," said Webb, 28. "Everyone is bound to come away with something different from this reading, and that's exactly what we want." Unlike most of the artists, who read their own poetry, comedian Ali Danois, a Penn graduate, performed part of his upcoming album, Keeping It Real Y'all. Danois said that he tends "to see things that other people don't see," adding that he tried to address problems facing today's youth. While Danois used comedy to share these "hard to see" things with the audience, rap artist Marlow Crawford, of the group Ta Killa Mercinaries, used music, performing three rap songs -- two of them without background music. Webb suggested to the audience that "to create a better understanding, we all need to walk in each others' footsteps. Unless we walk in another man's footsteps -- walk in another man's shoes -- we can't overcome prejudice." Led by Henderson -- a former Van Pelt College House graduate fellow and University graduate school alumnus -- the National Black Authors Tour is a "black literary collaborative organization," according to an article in the local West Side Weekly. The article also lauded the tour as being "one of the leading promoters, publicists, media consultants, booking agents and seminar coordinators for Black authors, writers and publishers throughout the United States." Henderson also wrote an off-Broadway play entitled "The Last Nigger Left Standing." Although the event failed to draw a large audience, Adzei said that "it wasn't expected to have a packed house.? The tour came to read even if they had to read for themselves." The fraternity is also sponsoring a series of discussions and workshops next month dealing with racial issues entitled "COLORS," or Campus Ongoing Lectures On Racial Sensitivity.