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Congress Must Act to Protect the Fundamental Right to Vote—for All
This month we’ve honored the anniversaries of events that we hoped would change America forever. On March 21, 1965, hundreds of men and women began a peaceful march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery to stand up for one of the most cherished and fundamental rights in our democracy—the right to vote. But on Sunday, March…
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Did My Kin Buy the Land They Worked as Slaves?
My grandfather is 92 and owns 688 acres of backwoods Alabama. Supposedly, former slaves cobbled this farm together. On a good summer day, if you are willing to venture deep into the forest and beat back the kudzu, undergrowth and rattlesnakes, you can find the slave graveyard—its crude tombstones serve as precarious markers of sunken…
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Defending the Importance of Hip-Hop Scholarship
Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Julius Bailey, assistant professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University, and Regina Bradley, an instructor of English and interdisciplinary studies at Kennesaw State University. They are discussing the importance of hip-hop studies and the use of social media in hip-hop scholarship. Recently Bradley contributed to and…
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Quote of the Day: Shirley Chisholm on Her Candidacy
You can read this quote by Shirley Chisholm, which she used as her 1967 campaign slogan, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more about Chisholm 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…
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War-Torn Congolese City Sings and Dances for Lasting Peace
For a few peaceful days in February, the city of Goma, in Democratic Republic of the Congo, was filled with the sounds of music rather than the cries of war. Despite ongoing problems between their respective countries, thousands of people from neighboring Rwanda and Burundi descended on the DRC for the region’s first multinational music…
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Obama Goes Solo in His 2nd Term
In the weeks since his State of the Union, President Barack Obama has issued a series of executive orders designed to stem a tide of growing economic and racial inequality that threatens to undermine the fabric of American society. Obama’s efforts to pivot the political narrative toward a focus on economic injustice reflects the fact…
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Fathers Need to Learn That Beating Daughters Won’t Make Them Good Girls
Just in time for April, which is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, there’s a new clip making the viral rounds of an angry black dad wailing on his child with a belt. In a video partially titled “Father Whoops on His 13-Year-Old Daughter Dressed Like Beyoncé After Missing for 3 Days” a scantily clad black girl…
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Quote of the Day: Amilcar Cabral on Nationalism
You can read this quote from Amilcar Cabral, from his speech “The Weapon of Theory” (1966), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context 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…
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Behind the Scenes With Tracey Edmonds
Tracey Edmonds never wanted to be on TV. She never dreamed of having cameras beside her face, reflecting wide and tight angles, flashing perfect teeth across the screen. A whiz-kid brainiac since birth, she attended Stanford University at 16 majoring in psycho-biology. Upon graduating at 20, Edmonds opened her own real estate and mortgage firm. But her…
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It Takes a Village to Keep Black Men Healthy
I had my annual physical examination a few days ago, and upon checking my vitals—my blood pressure score, as I’m telling everybody, was 118/72—my doctor, a 60-something white woman, jokingly remarked, “Love it when my peeps are doing well.” And though in many other settings her attempt at colloquial bonding might have been met with…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
