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African Immigrants: Highly Educated and Underemployed in America
Back home in Guinea, West Africa, Nasser Diallo had a law degree and a good job working as a political journalist for a radio station. That all came to an end in 2009, he said, when the military abruptly opened fire at a protest he was covering, massacring dozens “until they ran out of bullets.”…
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Surprised? Even Poor Whites Have It Better Than Blacks
From birth, practically, we’re told—again and again—that education is the golden ticket to the American dream. This is a meritocracy! Study diligently, put the work in and you, too, can get ahead, leapfrogging over your parents on the social strata. All you have to do is grab those bootstraps and pull. Hard. Or not. For…
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Holler if Ya Hear Me: How Tupac’s ‘Thug Life’ Translates to Broadway
Watching Holler if Ya Hear Me, Broadway’s ode to all things Tupac, I can’t help but wonder what it is about the Great White Way that neutralizes even the edgiest of material. Maybe it’s the live orchestra jamming away; maybe it’s the bright lights; maybe it’s all those jazz hands—or maybe it’s the effort to…
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Writer Pearl Cleage Tells the Messy Stories of Her Life
By her 20s, Pearl Cleage was on a completely different trajectory, living the kind of life for which a Spelman College degree presumably prepped one: power career as press secretary-speechwriter to Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor; power marriage to up-and-coming politico Michael Lomax (now president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund); powerful friends occupying powerful…
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The Wild Adventures of a ‘Colored Girl’ in the Early 20th Century
Anita Thompson Dickinson Reynolds was the black—or mocha—Zelig, traipsing continents at will, dancing on Broadway, acting in Hollywood with Rudolph Valentino, toiling as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, slumming it with French royalty—all the while rubbing shoulders with the likes of Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemingway, Charlie Chaplin and W.E.B. Du Bois. As Reynolds…
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Black Inventors: Innovators Who Changed the Way We Live
Teresa Wiltz is senior staff writer at Stateline, the journalism outlet of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Way before George Washington Carver got busy in a chemistry lab, African Americans were revolutionizing U.S. industry with their amazing inventions. Some of them were born enslaved, others were born free, but they all had one thing in common:…
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Great African-American Entrepreneurs Who Made History
Teresa Wiltz is senior staff writer at Stateline, the journalism outlet of the Pew Charitable Trusts. From the very beginning, black Americans have struggled to make a way out of no way. Faced with rampant racism and discrimination, industrious African Americans decided to do for self, launching their own businesses and empires. In honor of…
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2013 Pretty Much Sucked for Black People
Oh, sure, 2013 started on an optimistic note. President Obama, having won re-election by a landslide, was sworn in at the beginning of the year, setting the stage for his second term with soaring, progressive rhetoric filled with big vision and big promises. (And a lip-synching Beyoncé.) But there were times along the way that…
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Everyone Knew His Name. Now Hear His Story
There was a time, back in the ’80s and the ’90s, when you couldn’t turn the corner in Washington, D.C., and not see some evidence that Cool Disco Dan had been there. Way before Banksy, the D.C. graffiti artist was blasting his nom de plume on the sides of buildings, on bridges and on subway…
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A Child, a Singer, a Comic Top Philanthropy List
Teresa Wiltz is senior staff writer at Stateline, the journalism outlet of the Pew Charitable Trusts. ’Tis the season for giving—and some folks give a lot more than others. Some are celebrities wielding big checkbooks, while others are working behind the scenes, donating their time and talent. But whoever they are, they’re all about uplifting…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
