-
Florida School Named for KKK Leader Asked to Drop Name
A Jacksonville, Fla., parent has started a petition on change.org asking that a school district to change the name of a high school named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan, the Washington Post reports. The petition has accumulated about 75,000 signatures so far. And, according to…
-
Fashion Week: Black Designers
Harriette Cole is the author of the book of meditations 108 Stitches: Words We Live By and a contributing editor at The Root. Follow her on Twitter. Having skin in the game during Fashion Week as a designer can be a daunting act. Ask anyone who has made an attempt. First you have to be creative…
-
Remembering Civil Rights 'Rightly'
(The Root) — Fifty years ago tomorrow, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., was bombed. Four little girls — Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair — died in the blast. Violence broke out on the streets in Birmingham, a city with a long history of resistance to Jim Crow…
-
Do You Know the 4 Little Girls' Names?
(The Root) — The identities of the four little girls who died in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing Sept. 15, 1963, have been lumped together to serve to reference a point in the struggle for civil rights. The girls came to represent the violence black people endured at the hands of the Ku Klux…
-
Quote of the Day: Kenneth B. Clark on America's Ghettos
Read Kenneth B. Clark’s New York Times obituary 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.
-
George Zimmerman, Have You No Shame?
Following the spate of bad press that George Zimmerman has received since he was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin, Don Lemon, in a piece at BlackAmericaWeb, suggests that he borrow a page from Casey Anthony and disappear from the spotlight. … George, you had the audacity to take a big, cheesy smiley picture…
-
Syria and the Ugliness of War
Stanley Crouch, writing at the Daily News, says it’s a mistake for the Obama administration to think that a strike on Syria would be quick and easy, citing the length of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as examples. In Pablo Picasso’s paintings, war comes down to two things: slaughtering the innocent and raping available women. In a…
-
White Moms, Black Daughters and Natural Hair
In a piece at MyBrownBaby, Stacey Conner, a white mother, explores the complex social challenges surrounding the grooming of her black daughter’s hair, including dealing with comments from classmates, strangers and black and white mothers. It’s a strange no-man’s land I find myself in; I fear the judgment of black moms that I meet and…
-
Twitter Remembers Tupac
(The Root) — It’s hard to believe it’s been 17 years since rap legend Tupac Shakur died after being gunned down in Las Vegas. It’s even harder to believe that on the anniversary of his death, he is being missed and remembered by folks who weren’t even alive when he was. But that’s what’s happening…
-
How Bill Thompson Could Become a Hero
(The Root) — It’s hard to remember a time when Anthony Weiner was anything less than a punch line, let alone when he was viewed as downright heroic, but it really wasn’t that long ago. In 2005 Weiner, then a congressman, was considered a rising star in Democratic politics. He was also a leading Democratic…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
