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Everyone Is Asking the Wrong Questions About the Ray Rice Video
“PSA of the day … If you spit in a man’s face, you deserve to get knocked out. Man, woman or child. Period!” This was a friend’s Facebook status on the day the news broke that Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and his fiancee, Janay Palmer, had both been charged with simple assault after…
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Quote of the Day: Richard Wright on Blacks and America
You can read this quote from Richard Wright, which appeared in his book 12 Million Black Voices (1941), 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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A Symbol of African Power and Prestige
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. Poised in a heroic stance derived from the canon of classical…
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Being Mary Jane: Why We Watch Her Man-Stealing Mess
I used to argue that the worst thing about Being Mary Jane was, in fact, Mary Jane. Don’t get me wrong—BET’s newest scripted drama is a hit for all the right reasons: compelling and complex characters, gossipy twists and addictive cliffhangers. But its center is so unlikely. A character more easily characterized as a villainous,…
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Black Tea Partier Katrina Pierson Takes on Obama—and Her Own Party
Katrina Pierson isn’t who most people picture when they think of the Tea Party. The movement is, according to a recent poll, 83 percent white, and the 37-year-old political activist is a black woman who, given her multiracial background, might have been derisively described by fellow Texan Ted Nugent as a “mongrel”—just as he referred…
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Paula Patton and Robin Thicke Split, Internet Not Shocked
After nine years of marriage, singer Robin Thicke and actress Paula Patton confirmed their separation on Monday, much to the surprise of no one. “We will always love each other and be best friends, however, we have mutually decided to separate at this time,” the couple said in a statement to People magazine. The two were together…
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Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Makes Beats
Our favorite horrible mayor is back on the Internet, reminding us that trying to stay on the beat remains his life’s work. Embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford made an appearance Saturday night at a fundraising event for the Beat Academy, a Canadian organization dedicated to “hitmakers in the making,” which is slated to officially open its…
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The Woman Civil Rights Leaders Threw Under a Bus
Every year during Black History Month, Rosa Parks’ name rolls off the tongues of schoolchildren and educators around the nation as they discuss the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Yet the lesser-known Claudette Colvin, whom media outlets have referred to as “The Other Rosa Parks,” still remains absent from any teachings. The…
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Quote of the Day: Lionel Hampton on Jazz
You can read this quote by Lionel Hampton from his autobiography, Hamp (1989), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more quotes from Hampton 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 him on Twitter and Facebook.
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How Many Slave Narratives Were There?
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. 69: How often were enslaved Americans…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
