Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion, and possibly the greatest athlete of all time, was ranked No. 1 in the world before she left her job to give birth and nurture her daughter, Alexis Olympia, as well as recover from a pulmonary embolism.

Editor’s note: Welcome to The Root’s Sunday series highlighting the best in black fiction writers: It’s Lit! Each week we’ll feature a new story across all genres—from Afrofuturism to those stories that will bring a tear to your eye.

America’s No. 1 protest artist? Forget Banksy—meet Hank Willis Thomas. The African-American conceptual artist challenges ideas and oppression through themes of pop culture. He’s gained a huge following in the art and celebrity community, among them art lover Swizz Beats. Whether it’s photography, sculptures,…

Alas, the white kids behaving racistly goes on.

Updated: Sunday, May 27, 2018 8:00 a.m. EDT:

I don’t know whose “ancestors” Donald Trump was referring to when he said that they “tamed a continent,” but it certainly wasn’t mine, nor the other hundreds of millions of Americans whose ancestry is not European.

Oberlin, one of the first institutions of higher learning to open its doors to both blacks and women upon its founding in 1833, has named its main library for civil rights activist and women’s suffragist, Mary Church Terrell, who graduated from the liberal arts college in 1884.

Last week while we were all debating whether it was Laurel or Yanny, watching white people calling the police on black people just because they can, and continuing to marvel at the comedy of errors that is the current presidential administration, the federal prisons director quietly resigned from his position because…

“Having lost my paper, had a price put on my life, and been made an exile from home for hinting at the truth, I felt I owed it to myself and to my race to tell the whole truth.” — Ida B. Wells

When Starbucks closes its shops Tuesday for its planned all-day racial-bias training, some consumers will be scrambling to find somewhere else to get their daily jolt of caffeine. A group of black-owned coffee shops in Philly—led by a black-owned coffee company—are encouraging consumers to patronize black-owned coffee…

What was billed as an afternoon with two brand-new young, progressive mayors recently elected to serve two of the blackest cities in America quickly turned into a perfect example of how new ideas, radical thinking and a new guard of black leadership are changing the political landscape for African-American voters.