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'12 Years a Slave' Wins People's Choice Award
As predicted by some film connoisseurs, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave received the People’s Choice Award as audience favorite at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend, Deadline reports. The film, about a black violinist living in 1841 New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, is already being talked about…
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GOP Senator Praises Infamous Racist
(The Root) — The Republican National Committee has been working to shed the GOP’s image as a party that is not welcoming toward people of color. And for months Republican grassroots activists and local leaders have been the party’s biggest obstacles to its rebranding efforts, doing more to destroy the Grand Old Party’s image, particularly…
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'Sleepy Hollow': A New Day for Race on TV?
(The Root) — Of course, back in 1820, when Washington Irving penned The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, most black folks were in chains, women were little more than decorative chattel and a headless horseman turned out to be a practical joke formed out of a pumpkin. Clearly, a black detective — free and female —…
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Quote of the Day: Malcolm X on Speaking the Truth
Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute 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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Amid Strife, Congo's Musicians Fight to Play
(The Root) — Jean Claude “J.C.” Wenga, 24, expected to spend the last weekend of August performing in front of thousands of people from across Africa’s Great Lakes region at a historic music festival in his hometown of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indeed, the week…
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Chicago's Unsung Heroes
With all of the hand-wringing over Chicago’s failure to respond to exploding youth-gang violence, it would seem that no one is doing anything to help. But there are people who are quietly working to help combat the problem, whether it’s through charitable donations or toiling on the frontlines in communities. The Root has put together…
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Who Was Napoleon's 'Black Devil'?
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. (The Root) — Amazing Fact About the…
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NC Cop Charged in Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Black Man
The Associated Press is reporting that a North Carolina police officer has been charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of former Florida A&M University football player Jonathan A. Ferrell, 24, who was seeking help after a car accident in Charlotte. The deadly encounter was set in motion when a former college football player survived…
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Black Names: What's the Problem?
Jamelle Bouie, writing at the Daily Beast, concludes that the perennial debate among some whites about so-called unconventional black names says more about white ethnocentrism and racial inequality than black culture. Reddit isn’t just a clearinghouse for interviews, animal pictures, and crazy stories. It’s also a place where people ask questions and have discussions. Yesterday,…
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The Lives They Might Have Lived, 4 Little Girls
“This is for four women who are not here,” Leonard Pitts Jr. writes at the Miami Herald in an evocative reflection on the lives of the four little girls who died in the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing. He pays homage to the accomplishments they were never able to achieve due to racial hatred. It is…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
