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How Do I Trace My Cape Verdean Ancestry?
My father is African American and Cape Verdean, and he grew up on Cape Cod. His mother was Almeda Matilda Santos, born Jan. 22, 1922. She died March 7, 2002, and her parents had immigrated to the United States from Cape Verde Islands in the early 1900s. My father’s father, Benjamin Franklin Johnson, was the…
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What South Africa Can Learn From Black America
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in South Africa’s Rand Daily Mail. When Henry Louis Gates Jr. applied for admission as a student at Yale University, he felt the need to include the following personal statement in his application: “My grandfather was colored, my father was Negro and I am black. As always, whitey…
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The Top 15 Videos of 2014
This was the year of the video: Cellphone recordings, surveillance videos and celebs caught on camera took up most of the spots on The Root TV’s most-watched-videos list. From the Jay Z-Solange elevator confrontation to the young woman desperate to be Nicki Minaj after dental surgery, here are the 15 most viewed videos of 2014: 1. The…
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The Heroes of Selma and the Stars Who Play Them in the Movie
Selma, director Ava DuVernay’s much-anticipated film about the 1965 marches that led to the Voting Rights Act, hits theaters in selected cities Christmas Day and goes nationwide Jan. 9. DuVernay, who became the first black female director to earn a Golden Globe nomination, utilizes a cast of award-winning stars and up-and-coming actors to portray the…
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Justice Department to Review Fatal Shooting of Dontre Hamilton
The family of Dontre Hamilton—the 31-year-old African-American man who was fatally shot by a white police officer in Milwaukee in April—is now looking to the Justice Department to bring about justice since the Milwaukee County district attorney announced Monday that no criminal charges would be brought against Officer Christopher Manney for the shooting, Al-Jazeera reports. The…
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Shaneka Thompson Isn’t Just ‘a Woman in Baltimore’—Her Life Matters and You Should Know Her Name, Too
Shaneka Nicole Thompson’s name should be familiar to you by now—but it isn’t. Shaneka Thompson is a black woman who was shot by Ismaaiyl Brinsley this past Saturday before he headed to Brooklyn, N.Y., and tragically killed two police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, before killing himself. Thompson is the woman vaguely referred to…
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North Korea Allegedly Hacked Sony Pictures—Did Obama Respond in Kind?
President Barack Obama announced on Friday that the United States would levy a proportional attack against North Korea, since the East Asian giant is widely believed to be the cyber culprit responsible for hacking into the emails of Sony Pictures. So when North Korea’s Internet services went out cold on Monday, rumors began to circulate…
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NYC Mayor Encourages #BlackLivesMatter Protesters to Suspend Demonstrations
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is encouraging protesters rallying against racial bias in law enforcement and the criminal-justice system to suspend their demonstrations in light of the killing of two New York City police officers this past weekend in Brooklyn, the New York Times reports. “It’s time for everyone to put aside political…
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In Goya’s Adoration of the Magi, a Black King Plays an Exalted Role
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. An early and quite precocious work by one of Spain’s greatest artists takes a new approach to a venerated moment…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
