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On Maya Angelou’s Birthday, Black Girls Breathe Life Into Her Words
“If I had my druthers, I’d rather be born black, American, female and in the 20th century. And I was. What luck I have,” said Maya Angelou in 2010. With these words, Angelou spoke with the White House on the cusp of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor in the United States,…
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Watch: Women at Work: This First Lady Redefines the Role
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, The Root is celebrating women from a wide range of professional industries in our video series Women at Work. “People expect women to be a certain way. They expect black women to be a certain way,” says Chirlane McCray, the wife of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “You…
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Watch: Women at Work: Meet the Audio Engineer Who Moves to Her Own Beat
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, The Root is celebrating women from a wide range of professional industries in our video series Women at Work. “Being a woman and a music producer and an engineer is a very special task,” says Ebonie Smith, who works as an audio engineer, music producer and studio coordinator at Atlantic…
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Watch: Women at Work: ‘We’re Playing the Game, but at a Different Angle’
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, The Root is celebrating women from a wide range of professional industries in our video series Women at Work. Ariel Lopez and Janel Martinez are two Afro-Latinx millennials living in the Bronx, N.Y. And they’re techies, too. “I think tech is the most important industry. It is the lifeline…
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Watch: Dances of the Diaspora: Using Movement to Connect With a Higher Realm
For street dancer Storyboard P, dance is more than a form of movement. Dance is intuitive. It is a form of therapy, a means of communication, an escape from reality and a way to connect with a higher realm. “Expression is an avenue to get a means to a way out,” Storyboard P told The…
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Watch: Michael Eric Dyson Explains How Having White Skin Is the Biggest Handout in History
Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America is Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson’s 20th book—and it was his most difficult to write. Inspired by a July 2016 New York Times essay responding to the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Dyson uses Tears We Cannot Stop as an opportunity to…
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Watch: James Baldwin, in Our Words and His
James Baldwin is unequivocally one of the most prolific writers of his time. A queer black man, he brought life to the African-American experience through his novels, essays, debates and public lectures. And now a new generation is getting to experience the power of those words in the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro.…
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Watch: David Oyelowo Discusses His New Obsession, A United Kingdom
The film A United Kingdom tells the true story of an interracial couple—Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike)—who were drawn together by love but whose relationship was fraught with great trial. The adversities that this couple faced in the late ’40s are no surprise—namely, laws and systems to drive the pair apart…
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Watch: New App Lets Men Shop Like a Boss and Make the World a Better Place
Isaac Ewell believes looking good shouldn’t cost you a fortune. Ewell, a Morehouse and Harvard grad, left a lucrative job in education to lead a burgeoning startup company, Onehunted. This Philadelphia-based tech-lifestyle brand offers events and experiences, encouraging men to be their authentic selves, or “one hundred.” Get it? And as the co-founder and CEO…
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Watch: The Root Staff Tries Ms. Robbie’s Soul Food
By now you may have noticed that The Root staff likes a plate of good food and we offer the sharp opinions—hence the premise of our new video series, The Root Eats. Genius. In the past we were appalled by $66 collard greens (that had the nerve to be nasty), pitted fruitcakes against one another…
