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We Need a New ‘Straight A’ Strategy to Bridge the Digital Divide
Black History Month provides Americans an opportunity to celebrate our successes as a nation, reflect on what might have been and begin to craft a more inclusive future. Recent reports about the paucity of minority professionals in tech are all the more devastating because today’s underemployment has its roots in our collective failure to prepare…
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What a Black Man’s Cool, Detached Gaze Says About Race in the Early Days of Italy
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. From the other side of a narrow ledge, a black man looks out from a picture with an air of…
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Reconstruction-Era Voting-Rights Activist Claimed by an Assassin’s Bullet
In the late 1940s, a historian predicted that one day all of Mississippi’s schoolchildren, black and white, would come to know the name of Charles Caldwell, who gave his life during the Reconstruction struggle for black citizenship, economic opportunity and equal rights for women. It was a bold prediction at a time when the textbooks of…
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Meet Being Mary Jane’s ‘Cutty Buddy,’ Thomas Q. Jones
The closing scenes of last Tuesday night’s Being Mary Jane threw us all for a loop. After shooing away her ex, Mary Jane returned home and seemed to be in for the night. Suddenly she was getting dressed and heading back out to see a man we were introduced to only as “Cutty Buddy,” her…
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Apple’s New Emojis of Color Are Almost Here
Apple unveiled its diverse emoji sets in both OS X 10.10.3 and iOS 8.3 beta 2 Monday, according to The Verge. The new selections are available in six different color schemes that change the hair and skin tones of the previously standard Caucasian options. Consumer demand has been mounting in recent years for Apple to…
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Transgender Inmate Sues Ga. Prison for Being Denied Hormone Treatments
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group specializing in civil rights, filed a lawsuit Friday against Georgia’s Department of Corrections on behalf of 36-year-old transgender inmate Ashley Diamond, the New York Daily News reports. The suit seeks to have Diamond’s hormone therapy restored. According to the Daily News, Diamond, a Georgia native, has been…
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Watch: 12-Year-Old Ga. Boy Blasts Obama for Being Weak on ISIS and Terrorism
C.J. Pearson, a 12-year-old middle school student from Georgia, uploaded a video on his YouTube channel Saturday in which he blasted President Barack Obama for not really loving America, because if he did, C.J. claimed, Obama “would call ISIS what it really is—an assault on Christianity [and] an assault on America,” Pearson said. The video…
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In Their Moment of ‘Glory,’ Common and John Legend Showed the World Why the Selma Struggle Truly Is ‘Now’
Despite being nominated in only two categories, Selma stole the Oscars Sunday night by virtue of a best original song victory that was preceded by an electrifying performance of the song, “Glory,” by John Legend and Common. The musical performance added heart and soul to what was an otherwise pedestrian Academy Awards telecast. Accompanied by…
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I Never Felt More Proud to Be Black Than the Night President Obama Was Elected
Editor’s note: During Black History Month, the focus is usually on historical figures who loomed larger than life, paving the way for the progress we experience today. But black history isn’t just about telling stories of our past. History is being made every day and has been made throughout our lives; it’s not just in books.…
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Dorothy Dandridge: A 1st for the Academy Awards
Who was the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award in a leading role? Two black women had been honored before at the Academy Awards, both in the best supporting actress category: Hattie McDaniel, in 1939, the first African American ever to be nominated for an Oscar, and to win; and Ethel…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
