In this high-tech world we live in—where tech startups are creating new apps and gadgets daily that can do everything from ordering food to hailing a cab—the fact that black entrepreneurs make up only 1 percent of the founders of tech startups that receive major financial backing is pretty abysmal. But there are several programs…

Mental illness, still very much a taboo subject in the African-American community, is tackled head-on in the new movie Knucklehead, starring Alfre Woodard and Gbenga Akinnagbe. Seeing black characters dealing with mental-health issues on the big screen is still a rarity. Recently, Fox’s hit TV drama Empire has featured a character who suffers from bipolar…

Fresh off the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the Rev. Jesse Jackson brought his message of going “beyond the bridge” to the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. Jackson said that while the 1965 march was a major moment in the struggle to get…

The founders of #BlackLivesMatter are grateful that their message has been picked up by so many people as a rallying cry, but they want other groups that use the essence of the name, such as #MuslimLivesMatter and #LatinoLivesMatter, to find their own slogans. At a South by Southwest panel discussion, “What #BlackLivesMatter Teaches Us About…

How to solve the diversity issue in tech was one of the topics covered by the South by Southwest panel “How to Not Hire and Retain Employees of Color” on Saturday. The session—part of an initiative to diversify the annual interactive, film and music festival happening now in Austin, Texas—offered a unique first-person perspective of…

From Selma, Ala., to South by Southwest, filmmaker Ava DuVernay took her message of living in the moment and being grateful for what she has to the masses in her keynote address Saturday at the annual festival in Austin, Texas. The director, whose film Selma was nominated for a best picture Oscar, broke away from…

When the hashtag stops trending, what can be done to continue the movement? That was the topic tackled at the panel “When a Moment Becomes a Movement” at South by Southwest on Friday in Austin, Texas. The session was led by Cammie Croft, Amnesty International USA’s deputy executive director of digital and strategic communications. #BlackLivesMatter…

It isn’t exactly news that the tech world has a diversity problem. At this year’s South by Southwest Interactive—the tech portion of the annual music, film and interactive festival known as SXSW, which begins Thursday in Austin, Texas—black tech leaders will be looking at ways to address it. MVMT50 helped SXSW land the Rev. Jesse…

At the 74th annual Academy Awards in 2002, Sidney Poitier—who became the first African American to win a best actor Oscar in 1964, for Lilies of the Field—received an honorary Oscar for his body of work. That same night, Halle Berry became the first African American to win best actress for Monster’s Ball, and Denzel…

Long before Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry for justice, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was demanding a similar call to action with “All power to the people.” The new documentary Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution reminds us that unfortunately, so much has not changed over the years. The revolutionary organization was…