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I Am Not Your Negro Brings Back Baldwin’s Voice for a New Generation
In the late 1970s, James Baldwin began working on an idea for a book that would tell the story of America through the lives of three of his murdered friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. “I want these three lives to bang against and reveal one another as they did in…
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Yasiin Bey, Formerly Known as Mos Def, Says Goodbye at the Apollo
He came onstage dropping rose petals and left it dropping tears. The artist yasiin bey (yes, all lowercase), formerly known as Mos Def, spent two evenings in December at the world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem saying goodbye. After his final U.S. performances (he has three upcoming dates at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.), he…
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The Tragic Tale of TV’s 1st Black Stars Is Being Retold for the #OscarsSoWhite Era
Imagine a show so popular that when it’s on, even movie theaters stop films midreel and broadcast it so that audiences won’t stay home. For decades in the first half of the 20th century, that is exactly what The Amos ’n Andy Show was. During the heyday of radio, it was America’s most-listened-to program. Set in Harlem,…
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Pinklining: The Financial Threat More Women of Color Are Facing
The Great Recession is over. The economy is back on its feet. That’s the popular narrative Americans see and hear every day, but the impact of the financial crisis is still being felt across the country, especially by women of color. A new report (pdf) highlights how “pinklining,” a term most people have probably never…
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Don’t Ignore That Dull Pain. It Could Be Deadly if It’s a Blood Clot
What begins for hundreds of thousands of Americans as a dull pain in a leg can turn into a life-threatening episode that all too often baffles even their doctors. A blood clot that starts in an extremity may be small, but if it breaks off and travels to your lungs or heart, it can kill…
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Cornel West and Arturo O’Farrill Speak Truth to Power Through Jazz
In this day and age, there is little reward in seeking the truth, and less profit in sharing that truth once you have found it. So it’s remarkable that a program like Jazz and Spirit could ever come together, much less on a world-renowned stage like Harlem’s Apollo Theater. On Saturday a great philosopher in…
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Scandal’s Joe Morton and Dick Gregory Talk Turn Me Loose, a New Play About the Activist-Comedian’s Life
“Some white Americans are too scared to be openly bigoted, so they call it conservatism.” That statement could well have been spoken by a Black Lives Matter activist in 2016, but it came out of the mouth of Dick Gregory in the late 1960s. It’s just one of the many powerful lines the audience hears…
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Black Lives in Germany: A Multigenerational Struggle for Acceptance
Who am I? It seems like a simple enough question, but it is one that thousands of Germans of African descent have to ask themselves every day. In a country that defines identity with a great deal of precision, those who fall outside the norm find themselves trapped in a kind of limbo, neither here…
