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Actor Lance Gross Chaperones Howard University Students on Trip to China
Actor Lance Gross is playing a new role as a global ambassador for the Howard University Freshman Leadership Academy. The voyage started this past Sunday, when the Howard alumnus and about 60 students and faculty members boarded their flight to Beijing. On this three-week immersion trip, students will examine practices in education, business and leadership…
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Mom Jailed for Letting 9-Year-Old Daughter Play at Park Near Job
Is letting your child play in the park a crime? The North Augusta, S.C., police department thinks so. According to ABC 6, Debra Harrell has been charged with unlawful conduct toward a child for allowing her 9-year-old daughter to play in a park while Harrell worked at a nearby McDonald’s. The 9-year old was approached…
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In Art, Blackness Provides a Scent of the Exotic
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. Through the simple pairing of a half-length figure with a large vase of flowers, a fertile discourse is opened on the…
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Get on Up: The Pain of Playing James Brown
“You’re seeing a movie about a genius,” Chadwick Boseman says of Get on Up: The James Brown Story. He’d know this better than anyone, as the man tasked to bring the icon to life—and that feat requires a genius quality all its own. Boseman sits down with The Root’s social media editor, Terron Moore, to explain all the fear,…
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MLK’s Case for Reparations Included Disadvantaged Whites
What does white America owe black America? To even broach that question 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 seems straight-out wacky. Did not the election of a black president redeem the nation? At a minimum, it’s rude—refusing to avert the eyes from that elephant in the room: “America begins in black plunder…
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We Stand Together—Black and Brown—for the Young People of Chicago and Central America
Last week The Root’s Keli Goff wrote about the child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Central America and seeking refuge at our border. Unfortunately, she argued that we shouldn’t protect these brown children and supports deporting them—while claiming that we have our own black children to care about first, citing recent violence in the streets of…
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I’m Writing About My Bipolar Disorder While I’m Learning to Live With It
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2007, but it was just recently that I started a blog, Manic Monique’s Meanderings: My Journey to Wellness. I’m an English teacher at an all-girls school by day, but I am writing in my free time because I plan to publish a memoir about my experience with bipolar…
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LeBron James’ Return: Part Basketball, Part Urban Renewal
The King is back. LeBron James’ shocking announcement, via a letter posted on SI.com, that he will return to Cleveland has turned into a story that transcends sports. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson identified James as a rare example of an athlete who embraced social responsibility. “I have joy in my heart today because LeBron…
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Ind. Teen Allegedly Slayed Flight Attendant in Grisly Robbery Plot
In an eerie robbery plot that ended in murder near a deserted stretch of road in Gary, Ind., a veteran United Airlines flight attendant was viciously beaten, fatally stabbed and stuffed in her car trunk allegedly by her daughter’s boyfriend, the Daily News reports, citing various news outlets and court documents. Damarius Wren, 18, on…
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WeatherNation Hires Meteorologist Fired for Explaining Black Hair
Rhonda Lee, a meteorologist thrust into the national spotlight in 2012 after she was fired from a TV station for responding to a viewer’s racist remarks about her Afro, has a new gig. The Vane reports that Lee announced Friday that she’s been hired as meteorologist by WeatherNation. Lee was fired from the KTBS-TV, an…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
