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Watch Out for the Ladies of Late Night
Sasheer Zamata is set to debut on Saturday Night Live this weekend. It’s been five years since an African-American female was part of the cast. But Zamata will have some company in the halls of NBC’s Rockefeller Center. Take a look at the new ladies of late night. Amber Ruffin is an alumna of Second…
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Quote of the Day: Julie Dash on Our Ancestors
You can find this quote, from the character Nana Peazant in Julie Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read how the quote is further referenced 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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Web-Access Ruling Is a Loss for People of Color
The fight to preserve a free and open Internet has been raging for years, but now it’s crunch time. The big telecom companies have just won a major round in their fight to privatize the Web, and it’s now up to the Federal Communications Commission to reverse the missteps it has made over the past…
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Michelle Obama Through the Years
In honor of first lady Michelle Obama’s 50th birthday—she’ll be celebrating it at a White House bash this Saturday—The Root decided to take a look back at her early years. Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on Jan. 17, 1964, in Chicago. She was a student at Bryn Mawr Elementary School. Here she is at Princeton…
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A Single Dad Sees Race Through His Children’s Eyes
Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal sits down with David Ikard to discuss Ikard’s new book, Blinded by the Whites: Why Race Still Matters in the 21st Century. Ikard is a visiting associate professor at the University of Miami. Watch the interview:
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‘What Would MLK Think?’ We Don’t Know, So Let’s Stop Asking
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is coming up, and you know what that means: lots of talk about who has to go to work and who doesn’t. Plentiful “I Have a Dream” recitations. An annual reminder to elementary school kids across the country that it’s not nice at all to judge people based on the…
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Hold On, Conservatives, Marriage Is No Poverty Cure-All
Though the candidates rarely discussed poverty during the 2012 presidential election season, it now seems to have replaced the so-called war on women as the topic neither party can stop talking about. For the first time in my lifetime, Republicans and Democrats are trying to prove that they—not their opponents across the aisle—have a solid…
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Post-Shelby Cleanup: Bipartisan Effort Aims to Revive Voting Rights Act
When the Supreme Court ruled in its June 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision that a key component of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, the responsibility fell to Congress either to fill the gaping hole left by the striking down of the formula used for Section 5’s preclearance requirement or to otherwise update protections…
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Notable Members of Zeta Phi Beta
On Jan. 16, 1920, five women founded Zeta Phi Beta Sorority at Howard University. In honor of the organization’s 94th anniversary, we’ve gathered a list of some of its most notable members. 1. Zora Neale Hurston Alpha chapter Author 2. Sheryl Underwood Zeta Tau Zeta chapter Comedian, 23rd International president of Zeta Phi Beta 3.…
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Quote of the Day: Terry McMillan on a Man’s Mind
You can read this quote by the character Zora in Terry McMillan’s novel Disappearing Acts and 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.…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
