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Grammys Red Carpet: Stars Keep It Glamorous and Fabulous
Monday night is the 58th annual Grammy Awards, and indeed, the stars are out. Not only have the stars “stepped out,” but they are also “showing out.” Check out the fabulousness from the 2016 red carpet. Felice León is multimedia editor at The Root.
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Post-Valentine’s Day Prison Blues: How #Cut50 Is Trying to Bring Jailed Men Home to Their Families
For the wives and girlfriends of the 2 million men behind bars, Valentine’s Day meant waking up alone. For those able to visit their loved ones, they prepared by dressing in a prison-approved outfit: nothing too tight; nothing that shows leg above the knee or reveals shoulders; a wire-free bra; nothing that will set off…
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Once a Slave, Then a Soldier in a Battle for Freedom and His Family
In September 1864, Spotswood Rice, a 44-year-old soldier in the 67th Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry, wrote two letters from his hospital bed at a U.S. Army barracks near St. Louis. Seventy-three years later, in the same city, his daughter, Mary A. Bell, by then an 85-year-old widow, sat down in her four-room,…
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Ill. Governor to Shut Down Troubled Youth Detention Center
Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner announced Friday that he’ll close a troubled youth detention center, a move being praised by juvenile-justice advocates, according to the Chicago Tribune. Located in Kewanee, about 150 miles southwest of Chicago, the downstate facility houses mentally ill youths and those charged with sex crimes. The Tribune notes that about 43…
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Haiti Gets a New President Today … for Another 4 Months
Haitian lawmakers on Sunday chose the country’s Senate chief as president of an interim government, reports the Washington Post. In the early hours of Sunday, Jocelerme Privert was elected as provisional president and sworn in by Haiti’s legislature. Privert was one of three candidates vying to lead an interim government that’s only supposed to last…
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Watch: SNL’s “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” and How White America Went Nuts
There’s always been some speculation and lots of room for interpretation when it came to Beyoncé’s, um, ethnicity. No shade, but between the blond wigs, Creole propers and that L’Oreal ad where she self-identified as part French, Native American and black, well, one could comfortably assume that Queen Bey was just a shade black. Black-ish,…
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A White Journalist Discovers the Lie of Portugal’s Colonial Past
I was born in 1975, the same year that Portugal withdrew from its five African colonies—Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde Islands and Guinea-Bissau—becoming the last of the European powers to finally abandon colonialism. Throughout my life, I have been told that we, the Portuguese, were the explorers who discovered the world. We were…
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Supreme Court: Time for a Black Woman?
Keli Goff is The Root’s special correspondent. Follow her on Twitter. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Shelby County v. Holder, which overturned a key prevision of the Voting Rights Act, rattled civil rights proponents who see it as a major setback in the quest for racial equality and justice. The role of the court’s lone…
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Report: Obama to Name Successor to Antonin Scalia
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead Saturday at a West Texas ranch, reports My San Antonio. According to reports, Scalia, 79, arrived at the Cibolo Creek Ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch…
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Watch: Kevin Hart and Drake Act Up at All-Star Celebrity Basketball Game
Some wisenhammer got the bright idea to bring back rapper Drake’s first on-screen character, Jimmy Brooks, from Degrassi: The Next Generation, with a clip featuring Kevin Hart’s head superimposed onto another character. The 15-second short, in which Drake’s character, Jimmy (before his character became paralyzed), took on a bully on a basketball court, was a…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
