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Gone but Not Forgotten: How This Black Woman Is Carrying on the Legacy of Her Great-Grandfather and Black Wall Street
I think there’s absolutely the potential to create another Black Wall Street. I also think it’s important to support Black-owned businesses, as well as to remove our spending from corporations that only exploit us as customers. — Raven Majia Williams, founder, A.J. Smitherman Foundation text Imagine a thriving Black community with its own hospitals, schools,…
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'I Am a Descendent From People Who Have Interrupted Empire': Afro-Indigenous Poet Alán Pelaez Lopez Explores the Beauty of Radical Blackness in La Negritud
“Being a Black person means that you’re always having to build worlds. The world that one inhabits as a Black person, primarily in a colonized country—it’s a world that necessitates our elimination.” — Alán Pelaez Lopez text Growing up, Alán Pelaez Lopez always knew that they were indigenous—but, the Oaxaca, Mexico-native didn’t realize that they…
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The Big Bounce Back: Hurricane Katrina Devastated Black New Orleans, but Bounce Music Helped Revive the City
“When we came back [to New Orleans], everything was all messed up. But over time, and everybody coming together—community efforts—we rebuilt New Orleans. The people have to the keep the spirit and the culture alive.” — Big Freedia, musical artist text Bounce music is the heartbeat of New Orleans. The musical genre emerged in the…
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Master P Reflects on Becoming His Own 'Master' and Working With Tupac
“I’m constantly trying to educate myself. I’m constantly trying to master whatever I do.” — Percy “Master P” Miller text Master P is indeed a boss. The ex-rapper, actor, record label executive and former NBA player came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s, but as they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. In…
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Black Major League Soccer Players Speak Out in Documentary Protesting Racial Injustice
As evidenced by the 2020 uprisings, it is imperative that we take a stand against racial injustice. Across the country (and the world, for that matter), we are seeing civilians, celebrities and corporations (though we question the intentions of some of these companies) emphatically say “Black lives matter.” Given the long history of Black athletes…
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'Democracy Is at Stake': Glynda Carr, Judith Browne Dianis and Rashad Robinson on Wielding Black Political Power at The Root Institute
“Our lives are at stake. We’re in the midst of a pandemic, a health crisis. Black people are disproportionately dying, but [are] also sick. What we’ve seen because of this pandemic is that it has exposed the structural racism that we knew existed before, but other people didn’t know…We have an opportunity, in this election,…
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The Root Institute Chats Harnessing the Black Vote in 2020 With Glynda Carr, Judith Browne Dianis and Rashad Robinson
What is at stake during the 2020 elections? As we live in the midst of an uprising, which is a response to police killings of unarmed Black people (and a legacy of racism that has proliferated throughout the country), while being led by a man who refused to pay his respects to one of this…
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'We Have Been the Table Shakers': Rep. Ayanna Pressley Uplifts Black Women and Honors the Late Rep. John Lewis in Conversation at The Root Institute
“Black women–our hair, our bodies—are criminalized. Certainly, I am not exempt from that because I have a comma and a title after my name. That is still a weaponizing experience as a Black woman, as a Black woman in congress, and certainly, as a Black bald woman in congress navigating these spaces.” —Rep. Ayanna Pressley…
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'Justice Will Never be Justice for Me, Because My Child Is Gone': Korryn Gaines' Mother Speaks Out on the Anniversary of Her Daughter's Killing
“If she was a white girl, I think things would have been different. They would have handled her differently, they would have probably not taken her out to Burger King…But I think she would have walked out. I think she would’ve walked out and she would still be here.” — Rhanda Dormeus, mother of Korryn…
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Fallen but Not Forgotten: Unpacking the Erasure of Black Women in Conversations About Police Violence
“The frame around police violence is largely a male-male frame. It is a frame that that that devolves from lynching. It’s the idea of Black masculinity being constrained, being disciplined, being snuffed out if necessary. And that’s real. There is a realness to that. But that is not the exclusive way in which racial violence…
