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Kuumba & Chill: Netflix’s Doyenne Jasmyn Lawson Is Out Here Doing It for the Culture
As we continue on our Kwanzaa trek this year, today we celebrate Kuumba, or creativity, a place where—let’s be frank—black folks excel. From Black Twitter to music of practically every genre; from comedy to cooking; from politics to fashion, we are nothing if not creative. Kuumba is defined as: “To do always as much as…
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Kwanzaa Queens With That Nia Heat: BMMA Founders Manifest Purpose in Saving Black Mamas’ Lives
As we continue to celebrate the African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa, today brings us to Nia, or “Purpose,” defined as: “To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.” And two black women (it’s always black women isn’t it?), in their…
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Kwanzaa Shout: Richelieu Dennis, the ‘Essence’ of Cooperative Economics
Today—Dec. 29—the Kwanzaa principle celebrated is Ujamaa, or “cooperative economics,” and there was very little debate as to who personified the “essence” of this concept, simply defined as such: To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together. Richelieu Dennis, founder of the and CEO of Sundial…
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The Women of GirlTrek, in Their Literal Movement for Black Women, Radiate Collective Work and Responsibility
The Kwanzaa principle for today, Dec. 28, is Ujima: Collective Work and Responsibility. Ujima means building and maintaining our community together and making our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems while solving them together. Vanessa Garrison and Morgan Dixon, the founders of GirlTrek, embody the principles of collective work and responsibility. Their eight-year-old outfit organizes black…
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Habari Gani?! Kujichagulia! Marshawn ‘Spark the Blunt’ Lynch Goes Beast Mode for Self-Determination
For each day of Kwanzaa, the African-American cultural holiday that eschews the typical commercialism of the holiday season, we will be highlighting a person or persons from the past year who exemplifies the principle of the day. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 to uplift a sense of community through the principles of unity, self-determination, collective…
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About That Kwanzaa Life: The Ladies of KFC Were the Embodiment of Umoja in 2018
As with last year, The Root is celebrating the blackest holiday of them all! For each day of Kwanzaa, we will be highlighting a person(s) from the past year who exemplifies the principle of the day. Kwanzaa remains an African-American cultural holiday that eschews the typical commercialism of the holiday season, and uplifts a sense…
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Teddy Riley Is an Unsung G. The Rump-Shaking Maestro Is Finally Getting His Just Due
You can call Teddy Riley many things: master of the ’90s R&B jam, baby-making songwriter; The Original Rump Shaker (yes, it needs the capital letters); remixer extraordinaire (I mean, the man turned the Rugrats theme into a bop, for goodness sakes.) But, at 52, Edward Theodore Riley is also one of the unsung architects of…
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A Dozen+ Songs Touched by Teddy Riley, and You Ain’t Even Know
Best believe if you love hip-hop, R&B, soul, gospel, or any form of black music, you have quite a few of Teddy’s jams on your music app or iPhone. From Big Daddy Kane to Jay-Z, Michael Jackson to SWV, Teddy Riley was the man behind the boards of some of pop’s greatest hits; and some…
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Sandy Still Speaks: New Sandra Bland Doc Uses Her Voice to Uncover the Still-Unknown Tale of a Fatal Police Stop in Texas
Like me, Sandra Bland hailed from a “girl family.” She was the fourth of five sisters. Her siblings’ names, like hers, all start with S—Shante, Sharon, Shavon, Sandy, and Sierra. They were a close-knit clan who always had each other’s backs, whether it was in Chicago or Villa Park, Ill., where their mother moved them…
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Take That Selfie Thing to the Next Level: The 2018 Root Self-Care Gift Guide on Black (AF) Friday
Last year we did a gift guide on being woke; this year, we desperately want to awaken from this nightmare of the Trump administration and its hell-bent mission of disenfranchising and subjugating those who are not rich, straight, white, male, and morally bankrupt. Fear not—we have a balm, a safe space, some product (this being…
