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10 Signs You’re Black and From Chicago
Our “Promised Land” has always had its issues, but black Chicagoans know that our part of the city is as real as it gets. It’s not something you can shake off. Ask Kanye and Common. Chicago is in our DNA and lives in our bones forever, even if some of us no longer reside there.…
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10 Signs You’re Black and From Atlanta
Ronda Racha Penrice is a freelance writer living in Atlanta. She is the author of African American History for Dummies. Definitely more than a strip club, Magic City is an institution of sorts. Some would even say a “welcome center.” Usher, Kanye, Michael Jordan, Deion Sanders, Rihanna and practically every rapper with a rap song has…
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Michel’le’s Surviving Compton Doesn’t Forget About Dre
“Everybody keeps asking me, ‘Girl, why you ain’t in they movie? You was there. You was down with Ruthless Records right along with them boys,’” Michel’le Toussaint informs us in her intro to her Lifetime biopic, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge and Michel’le. Straight Outta Compton is the movie to which Michel’le, as she is best-known,…
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Meet Maverick Carter, LeBron James’ Real MVP
It’s pretty impossible not to know LeBron James, No. 2 on this year’s The Root 100 list of black Influencers. For over a decade now, the NBA’s other 23 has been working overtime, even ending his 13th basketball season with a first-ever NBA championship for his Cleveland Cavaliers and his third overall. Maverick Carter, who…
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Harry Belafonte’s Many Rivers to Cross Festival: A ‘Woodstock’ for Social Justice
Even at age 90, Harry Belafonte hasn’t laid down his sword. Over the weekend, he, along with his daughter Gina Belafonte, hosted the inaugural two-day Many Rivers to Cross: A Festival of Music, Art & Justice, just outside Atlanta, through the organization Sankofa.org, which he founded in 2013. Sankofa.org uses celebrities to elevate the issues…
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Urbanworld Celebrates 20 Years of Showcasing Black Films While Hollywood Plays Catch-Up
Long before Hollywood entertained modern-day diversity or inclusion conversations, Urbanworld, founded by onetime Motown Records and Miramax Films executive Stacy Spikes in 1997, was already expanding the “urban” landscape in film, pushing beyond racial, geographic and other limits, and freely mixing music and other aspects of urban culture. It’s a mission the festival, in its…
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Iyanla Vanzant Is Out to Destroy the Myth of the Angry Black Woman
Iyanla: Fix My Life, the series featuring spiritual teacher and life coach Iyanla Vanzant, has been a fixture on the Oprah Winfrey Network since 2012, and the addition of scripted programming like Queen Sugar to the network has not changed that. For this season, Vanzant, known for her work with Basketball Wives’ reality star Evelyn Lozada…
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A Love Story Interrupted by 9/11
Dennis Shortt remembers that morning as if it were yesterday. Whenever he found himself on the East Coast side of their Chicago-New York City romance, he usually beat his fiancee, Sharon Moore, up in the morning, even though she was the first to leave their Jamaica Estates apartment in the city’s Queens borough for work.…
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With Atlanta and Queen Sugar, TV Gets a Dose of Real Southern Blackness
“I’m criminally Northern,” from black Twitter stalwart and cultural critic Jamilah Lemieux about the epic Tuesday night of black Southern intensity fueled by new TV shows Atlanta and Queen Sugar. Clearly, the Chicago native, who now calls New York City home, was not alone, as similar sentiments also showed up on Twitter. Those from the…
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Why Tika Sumpter Was So Nervous About Playing Future First Lady Michelle Obama
In coming months, we will be inundated with the endless highlights from our first black president’s historic two terms. One of the most delightful developments over the first family’s eight-year stay is the emergence of first lady Michelle Obama. Is there any doubt that she helped spark the #BlackGirlMagic that is our reality more and…
