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Maya Angelou’s Words That Spoke to All Our Lives
Legendary author, poet and actress Maya Angelou, who passed away Wednesday morning at age 86, will be remembered for her uncommon wisdom as much as for her award-winning writing. Deep insight into the African-American experience and a compassionate perspective—combined with a magical way with words—equipped her to weigh in like no other on what it…
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Maya Angelou: A Phenomenal Woman Passes On
One of the United States’ most prolific and beloved authors and poets has died at the age of 86. Maya Angelou was a Renaissance woman whose life inspired six autobiographies, including her internationally celebrated first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou was found unresponsive in her Winston-Salem, N.C., home. Her death comes…
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14 Moral Mondays Protesters Arrested at NC Republican House Speaker’s Office
If North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis was under the impression that implementing new rules in the state Capitol for public demonstrations would be enough to silence the Moral Mondays protesters who made Raleigh, N.C., a focal point in progressive politics during last year’s legislative session, he might want to rethink. After all, as the…
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Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thought
Last night we had a couple over as dinner guests. The wife is an old friend of my wife’s, from Chicago. I never liked her. She moved to Australia and got married, and she and her husband were here visiting. At one point, discussing the aboriginal people of Australia, she said, “They have a very simian—a…
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Cicely Tyson: 6 Career-Defining Roles
Long before Kerry Washington started handling her business in her Emmy-nominated role as Olivia Pope, actress Cicely Tyson was doing her thing and helping to open doors for actresses like Washington. Forty years ago, Tyson became the first black woman to win an Emmy in a leading role for her performance in the miniseries The…
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‘Case for Reparations’ Explains How America Must Come to Terms With Its History
Social media is buzzing over Ta-Nehisi Coates’ remarkable essay, “The Case for Reparations,” recently published in The Atlantic, and his appearance on legendary journalist Bill Moyers’ Moyers & Company, in which Coates distills the ways in which American history has distorted our understanding of contemporary race relations. White supremacy, he reminds us, is as integral…
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New Study Shows We’re Not Post-Racial When It Comes to Hiring Decisions
A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research reinforces a reality that many of us have long understood and that is well-documented: African-American unemployment has been nearly double that of white Americans throughout much of the last five years. What has not been as widely covered is that racial disparities in unemployment…
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Ending Bondage With a Display of Humanity
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. In a lush tropical setting, a large group of nearly naked…
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‘Unpopular Black Opinion’ Confessions
There are unpopular opinions, and then there are unpopular black opinions. Have you ever been talking to your friends and let one slip? Maybe you’ve come out as anti-Scandal or, worse, turned the station when a Beyoncé song came on. The backlash that can come from speaking your truth is enough to make you worry…
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The Root’s Summer Reading List
Who says summer reading has to be fluff? There are so many recent titles and reprinted standouts tackling the black experience—in poetry, biography and works of fiction—that even the most voracious readers can barely keep up. Pack one of these to turn a trip to the pool into an inspiring escape, and get your sun…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
