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The Phenomenal Women of Freedom Summer
Over a 10-week period, 1964’s Freedom Summer brought together nearly 700 student volunteers, local residents and other civil rights activists to work to ensure that African Americans in Mississippi could exercise their right to vote. But without the tireless work of these eight dedicated women, the movement as we know it wouldn’t have been the…
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Minneapolis Locals Slam Bar Louie Dress Code as Covertly Racist
Bar Louie, located in uptown Minneapolis, has been accused of implementing a dress code that has drawn the ire of some local residents who say it indirectly targets black people, reports Fox 9. The bar’s new policy prohibits attire such as fitted caps, athletic apparel like sports jerseys, ostentatious chains, oversized white T-shirts and other…
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Missing NYC World War II Veteran Found in Las Vegas
Last week Richard Micheaux, a decorated World War II veteran, put on his U.S. Open logo cap, blue carpenter jeans, an off-white shirt with black and red stripes and brown shoes, with his dog tags proudly draped around his neck. Micheaux, 93, headed out his door last Tuesday morning for what was supposed to be…
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Leading Black Producers on Broadway Adapt Film Black Orpheus
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and Tony Award winner George C. Wolfe are looking to ride the Brazilian wave energized by the World Cup and the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics by bringing the film Black Orpheus to Broadway, the Associated Press reports. The musical’s producers will be Stephen Byrd, Alia Jones-Harvey and Paula Marie Black.…
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Do You Know the Legend of the 1st Black Saint?
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Represented on this wooden panel is a rare sequence of narrative…
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Cuba: Is It Time to Turn Enemies Into Frenemies?
You can’t ignore a rogue Caribbean communist island a jump from the Florida coast, especially when it’s run by guys named Castro. But President Obama didn’t want his spot blown when he sent a low-key missive to Cuban President Raúl Castro just a couple of weeks ago. There was very little noise made when he…
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Credit Invisibility Means Less Economic Opportunity in Black America
“I am invisible, understand,” Ralph Ellison famously wrote, “simply because people refuse to see me.” He was speaking of the double consciousness that accompanied the burden of blackness in America more than 60 years ago. But according to Yale professor Frederick Wherry, this conundrum is not just social and political but also economic—and that sense of…
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Really? Meme Shames Black Women for Buying Weaves From Koreans
The image above, which appears to have been created sometime last year, resurfaced and popped up in our Facebook newsfeed today, along with a reminder of a seemingly timeless theme: the stereotype-based shaming of black women for choices that don’t harm anyone and, really, aren’t anyone else’s business. The meme—which essentially says that black women wear…
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Why I Support My Brother’s Keeper but Still Signed the Letter Criticizing It
Over the past month or so, the conversation concerning the Obama administration’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative has quickly degenerated into an all-too-familiar debate that boils down to this: Who wins the medal of “most oppressed”? As they have in controversies past, dueling statistics have emerged to “prove” that “It’s black boys!” or “No, it’s black girls!”…
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Booming Black Businesses Fuel Brazil’s New Middle Class
Just 12 years ago Adriana Barbosa was unemployed and selling clothes at tiny street bazaars. It was the 21st century, but Barbosa realized that much of the country’s Afro-Brazilian population was still unable to find products and services designed for them. So she created Feira Preta, a cultural fair where hundreds of black exhibitors showcase…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
