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Ageless Beauties: 14 Women Who Are Aging Wonderfully
Diana Ross turns 70 this week. Patti LaBelle will join her in the septuagenarian club in a few months. Here’s a look at a few of their peers who must have found the fountain of youth and are giving credence to the adage “Black don’t crack.” It’s hard to believe that the queen of Motown…
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Black Theater Success Is Reshaping One of America’s Whitest Fields
The theater world has long been considered one of the most elite—and least diverse—in American culture. And as I’ve previously covered for The Root, at present there are only a handful of African-American Broadway producers, despite the fact that 46 new shows opened last season. Over the years, though, there have been occasional African-American playwriting…
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Who Was the 1st Black Ventriloquist?
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 72: Who was the first American-born…
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Digital Soul: The Computer, Imagination and Social Change
Science fiction authors and philosophers have asked: Could a computer have a soul? I have a different question: Could a computer produce soul (if you dig what I mean)? The computer is an instrument, just like a piano and a human voice. So just as Nina Simone used those instruments in her song “Mississippi Goddam,” the computer…
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Millions Remain Uninsured As Affordable Care Act Deadline Approaches
As the March 31 deadline to sign up for HealthCare.gov looms, millions of Americans remain uninsured, the Associated Press reports. The finding comes even as President Obama, scores of advocates and volunteers race to spread the word about the new health law. Most of the uninsured do not know much about the law and its…
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Chicago Police Search for Mom After 'Precious Baby Girl’ Found Abandoned
Chicago police are searching for the mother of a baby found abandoned in the lobby of a South Side apartment building, NBC Chicago reports. Thomas Freeman told police he found the child wrapped in a purple blanket about 11:30 p.m. Friday at the building in the 8200 block of South Justine Street. The child was…
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Michelle Obama Emphasizes Freedom of Speech in Visit to China
Freedom of speech and unrestricted access to information make countries stronger, Michelle Obama told students in China, the Associated Press reports. China has some of the world’s tightest restrictions on the Internet. The first lady spoke Saturday at Peking University in Beijing during a weeklong visit designed to advance educational exchanges between the United States…
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Quote of the Day: Jenée Desmond-Harris on Race as a Political Creation
You can read this quote by The Root’s senior staff writer, Jenée Desmond-Harris, in a column explaining why race is an invented political system, here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow…
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Africans Are Helping Themselves—Fuel Their Innovation, Not Your Own
It has been a recurring experience during my trips to Ghana and Nigeria in the past few years: seeing Africans do far more for themselves than the mainstream narrative about Africa would have you believe. More important, the methods used by local merchants—and even laymen who have to be ready at a moment’s notice to…
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Black Students Expelled or Suspended at Higher Rates Than Whites
Public school students of color face punishment more often and have less access to skilled and experienced educators than their white counterparts, the Huffington Post reports, citing surveys released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education. The surveys, which include data from every U.S. school district, shows that black students are suspended or expelled at…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
