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MLK’s Daughter Talks About Her Parents’ Legacy and Her Sibling Rivalry
“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors,” said author and political activist Helen Keller. “And no slave who has not had a king among his.” And perhaps this has never been more befitting than when applied to the famed African-American family whose name, history and legacy are synonymous with…
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Exclusive: Harry Reid Says Rand Paul Is Right on Felon Voting Rights
Though he acknowledges that they rarely agree when it comes to policy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has offered a ringing endorsement of Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) latest proposal: the restoration of felons’ voting rights. Paul, a Tea Party darling, just introduced a bill that would restore the rights of nonviolent offenders, a longtime…
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Why Girls of Color Should Be Included in My Brother’s Keeper
One crisp November morning in 2012, a 14-year-old girl named Maia* grabbed her backpack and rushed out of the house to make the morning bell. She took her normal route to school but picked up her pace when a white van began following her. She ran, but couldn’t outpace the 10 teenage boys who grabbed…
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Sudanese Woman’s Death Sentence for Christian Conversion Struck Down
Updated June 24, 2014, 11:58 a.m. EDT: Meriam Ibrahim has been detained at the international airport in Khartoum, Sudan—the country’s capital—while she, her husband and two children were attempting to leave the country, according to her lawyer, Mohaned Mustafa El-Nour, the Daily News reports. “They knew she had been cleared by the court, but they have rearrested her,”…
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How Andromeda, the Daughter of Ethiopian Royalty, Ended Up White
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. One of the most profound qualities of the classical Greek mind…
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An Original Freedom Rider Reflects on the Struggle
In 1961, 19-year-old Howard University student Hank Thomas embarked on a journey that would change interstate travel forever and inspire the birth of other movements. Thomas made a quick decision to join the Congress of Racial Equality’s Freedom Rides to travel from Washington, D.C., to the Deep South with several other young African Americans and…
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Activists Head to Mississippi to Commemorate Freedom Summer
Civil rights activists, youth organizers and religious leaders from around the country will travel south this week to participate in the Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th Anniversary Conference. Dubbed Freedom 50, the commemoration (June 25-29) will remember the civil rights history made in Mississippi during the 1964 Freedom Summer and will create the largest convening of…
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Unearthing a Historic Free African-American Community
A backhoe gouged a neat T-shaped scar into a grassy lot in downtown Hampton, Va., revealing … dirt. You could see dark patches in the soil—some circular, others square, most bloblike—but it was still just dirt to the layperson. To archaeologist Dave Hazzard, though, these splotches may be man-made “features,” or possible evidence of one…
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Venus Williams Strips Down for ESPN the Magazine’s Body Issue
Venus Williams leaves very little to the imagination in ESPN the Magazine’s sixth annual Body Issue, hitting newsstands July 11. Williams didn’t quite know what she was getting into when she agreed to pose for the issue. “It didn’t dawn on me until right when I walked on set that I would have to be…
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The Obamas: We Want Our Daughters to Experience Minimum Wage
Malia Obama may have interned as a production assistant, but her parents want her and younger sister Sasha to experience minimum wage work in the future. In an interview with Parade magazine, Michelle Obama told the magazine, “I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
