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Quote of the Day: Gwendolyn Brooks on a Grittier Life
You can read this quote by Gwendolyn Brooks, from her poem “A Song in the Front Yard” (1945), 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…
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Time to Make Ghana—and All of Africa—Triumphant, Independent and Free
It has been more than a half-century since the African continent began freeing itself from the scourge of colonialism. Ghana, my country, led the movement toward liberation by becoming the first sub-Saharan nation to gain its independence. And today marks the 57th anniversary of that occasion. When the clock struck midnight and Great Britain’s Gold…
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Remembering Chokwe Lumumba: A Revolutionary Politician
Editor’s note: Chokwe Lumumba died suddenly of heart failure last week at the age of 66. The black nationalist, who at one time advocated for a separate nation for blacks inside the U.S., was elected mayor of Jackson, Miss., last year. His funeral will be held this Saturday. Three years ago, Amiri Baraka delivered the…
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Obama to Black People: I’m Showing You the Money
President Obama released his fiscal year 2015 budget this week, telling reporters that the document “is about choices, it’s about our values.” And the White House is making the case that those values have everything to do with creating a better life for black people in America. Of course, you’ll find little of the controversial…
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How Black Parents Would React If We Sued for Child Support
New Jersey teenager Rachel Canning, 18, lost a lawsuit asking her parents to pay her child support. Canning, however, is still hoping that the judge will order them to pay for her college education. We think black parents would have handled the situation a little differently. We took a survey of The Root staff to find out…
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Seriously, Chelsea Handler? You’re Going With the ‘Black Boyfriend’ Defense?
Though Chelsea Handler’s real sin may be the fact that she’s painfully unfunny, she managed to offend this week for another reason. While guest live-tweeting for the Huffington Post during Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast, she provoked cries of racism at worst and racial insensitivity at best when, after Lupita Nyong’o was named the winner of…
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Celebrating the Past and the Future in DC
The polar vortex couldn’t stop Washington, D.C.’s movers and shakers from marking the end of Black History Month 2014 in style. The Root’s D.C. insider, Nicole Venable, went behind the scenes at three events—including the one shown here, “Honoring Our Past, Celebrating Our Future,” featuring former and current black senators—that celebrated leadership, diversity and history. On Feb.…
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Quote of the Day: Albert Murray on Blacks’ Perception of America
You can read this quote by Albert Murray, from his book The Omni-Americans (1970), 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 the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow…
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Black College Students Launch Artistic Social Media Campaigns About Race
The 1990s babies matriculating at top-tier universities are in the midst of active protest. They have been for a while now. Back in November, several black students at the University of Michigan launched a social media campaign on Twitter, using the hashtag #BBUM, an acronym for “being black at the University of Michigan,” to describe…
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Lupita’s Spotlight: A Reality Check for Light-Skinned Women?
The scene Sunday night: an Oscar-watching party. The topic: of course, beautiful Lupita’s fairy-tale moment. So my friends and I naturally start tweeting and talking about what it all means. I make what I think is a fairly innocuous point. I told one of my friends that finally—all these years after Dark Girls and Good Hair…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
