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Love Hurts on 'Law & Order' and in Real Life
(The Root) — Love will forever be the stuff of picture-perfect movie endings, epic novels and the entirety of Adele’s musical catalog. Whether someone’s finding it, losing it or longing for it, love is at the center of every good story ever told — and the more tragic the love, the more often the story…
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Michelle O's Polite Dismissal of Oscar Haters: 'Not Surprising'
In certain circles, Michelle Obama gets criticized just for existing in the body and skin she was born with. So it’s no shock at all that plenty of Americans had negative reactions to the first lady’s Sunday-night satellite appearance at the Academy Awards. As the Associated Press put it, the broadcast “provoked a national conversation…
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A 'Black and Very Handsome' Man for 'Downton Abbey'?
According to the British tabloid the Sun, the plot of the award-winning drama Downton Abbey will be enhanced with a little color before long. And not just any black person will do for what’s reportedly going to be a storyline about race relations in the 1920s. Casting notes sent out to actors agents earlier this month…
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Rosa Parks' Statue Would Have Embarrassed Her
But, says Parks biographer Douglas Brinkley at The Root DC, the self-deprecating civil rights hero would be perturbed that President Obama has yet to issue an executive order to create the Harriet Tubman National Monument. Gazing across the Detroit River and the skyline of Windsor, Ontario from a high-rise condominium in downtown Detroit, Rosa Parks…
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I'm Black and I Think I Have Presidential Roots
(The Root) — Right now there’s a lot of popular interest in the life of President Abraham Lincoln, due in no small part to the recent success of Steven Spielberg’s award-winning 2012 film, Lincoln. I share that interest, and in 2009 even presented a documentary on PBS about his legacy called Looking for Lincoln. Below,…
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Black Women Suffering Silently With Eating Disorders
We cannot heal what we refuse to identify as a wound, Erika Nicole Kendall writes in a piece for Ebony. My mother is in the hospital for a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which basically means that a blood vessel burst in her brain. She is laying in a hospital bed, silent, still and bandaged. I am a…
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Richard Street: 2nd Temptations Singer to Die This Month
R&B singer Richard Street died early Wednesday at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Las Vegas, CNN reports. He’s the second former member of the Temptations to pass away this month — just 10 days after Damon Harris on Feb. 18. “They’re dancing up there in heaven, him and Damon,” his widow, Cindy Street, said. “I’m…
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Watch Your Locks! Dread Thieves in South Africa
We checked and checked again, and we’re certain this story isn’t from the Onion. (First piece of evidence: No profane insults to little girls; second one: The URL actually contains “BBC.”) But the report of an epidemic of South African dreadlock stealing, fueled by intense demand on the part of those who just can’t wait…
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'The Root Live' Video: Making a Difference
(The Root) — For the Feb. 25 and final taping of The Root Live, about being an agent for change, host Harriette Cole talked to NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, entrepreneur Tracey Edmonds and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Khalil Gibran Muhammad about how they’ve made a difference for black communities. “Don’t be…
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106-Year-Old Woman Gets High School Diploma
Reba Williams, a 106-year-old woman in Columbus, Ohio, is finally going to get her high school diploma. No, she didn’t just recently finish her coursework. Rather, it seems the same determination that has kept her alive and active this long also kept her from reading the final book assigned by her teacher during her last…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
