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Black Girls in Durham, NC, School Denied Right to Honor African Heritage
It started as a collective expression of pride. A group of young women at the School for Creative Studies in Durham, N.C., decided to wear head wraps—also called geles—to align with and honor their culture at the start of Black History Month. Instead, they say, administrators warned that they were in violation of the dress…
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Literary Women Pay Homage to Zora Neale Hurston on Her 125th Birthday
She was born in Notasulga, Ala., but she didn’t like the way her story started, so she rewrote it and claimed Eatonville, Fla., as her birthplace instead. She wasn’t too partial to 1891, the year her mother delivered her, so she remixed it, and for the rest of her life, she took liberties with the…
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Dear Black Girl: Letters From the Souls of Black Women
How long has it been since you wrote a letter? Not an inbox message, not an email, not a mega-marathon text that breaks itself up into five installments, but a dear-you, love-me letter? The Beautiful Project, a Durham, N.C.-based collective shifting how black women and girls see themselves and how they’re portrayed in the media,…
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Black Women, This Is What Self-Care Looks Like
In A Burst of Light, her aptly titled collection of essays, Audre Lorde famously wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Almost 30 years after she put that oft-quoted, oft-referenced and oft-memed thought to paper, black women are still trying to figure out what…
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Is Public Shaming the Right Way to Discipline Kids?
It’s a son forced to hold a stack of books over his head until he’s in pain as punishment for stealing. It’s a girl wearing a “shame shirt” to school for bringing home bad grades. It’s an old-man, Sherman Hemsley-esque haircut for a misbehaving boy. It’s an underperforming student strolling a busy city intersection with…
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11 Signs Your Hood Is Being Gentrified
In Washington, D.C., as in many cities undergoing extreme urban makeovers, if you miss a week of moving about in certain neighborhoods, you’ll miss a whole heck of a lot. Sad times for you if you’re a landmark driver like I am, when even a short trip on familiar streets can induce a fog of…
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Lincoln or Cheyney: Which Was the First HBCU?
Nestled in the campestral sprawl that is the rural outskirts of Philadelphia, no more than 35 minutes from each other, are Cheyney University and Lincoln University, the two historically black colleges or universities in Pennsylvania. Their campuses are living, moving, thriving tributes to their culture-rich communities and the giftedness of the Diaspora. Each has educated…
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LaShanda Armstrong: A Horrible Act, but Not a Horrible Person
Under an ombré sky on April 11, 2011, just before 8 p.m., LaShanda Armstrong drove her minivan into the dark, still-chilly waters of the Hudson River in New York. The decision to end her life—and the lives of her four small children in the car—seemed to be born more from consuming desperation than methodical malice.…
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Ignoring the Crisis of Cutting and Self-Harm Among Black Children
Today is Self-Injury Awareness Day. It’ll hardly get a passing mention across most African-American media platforms because it’s not a “black issue.” On the contrary, it is. I’m the mother of a loveable 15-year-old daughter. She’s bubbly and funny. She wears me out reenacting scenes from High School Musical and Twilight. She’s astute for her…
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50 Books Every Black Woman Should Read
Janelle Harris, inspired by the season’s upcoming hibernation-inducing weather, makes a list of suggestions at Essence. It is by no means a comprehensive list. I don’t even think we could create one because somewhere, someone is writing a great book right at this very moment that will ultimately deserve a space on many of our…
