13 Inventions We Would Not Have Without Pioneering Black Women
Beware: The Real Version of Your Partner May Be Hiding in Their Phone
All The Fabulous Black Style Seen At Paris Fashion Week
Take a Look Inside Barack Obama’s Former White House Man Cave
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The Magical, Riveting, Amazing Story of JJ and the Enthralling Power of Art
It’s early September 2019. The store clerk just outside Amsterdam Centraal Station watches me blow a gust of warm breath into my palms and tells me the best parts of summer left one week ago. The city welcomes me, as it had on my last six visits, with a cool breeze and light rain and…
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Should Salads Be on Plates or in Bowls? (A Short Debate About a Dumb Thing People Do)
I eat salads often now, because I have transitioned to a phase of my life where I’m expected to eat them often, and I don’t want to subvert those expectations. I’m so immersed in salad culture, so attuned to the salad zeitgeist, that my affinity for leafy greens lightly fondled by zesty liquids precedes me.…
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Wu-Wednesday: The Wu-Tang Clan Play 'Black Ass Game'
It’s Wu-Wednesday, folks! Wu-Tang: An American Saga on Hulu is well underway. Have y’all caught the series yet? What’s the read—are folks feeling it? On this Wu-Wednesday, allow us to offer some levity for that azz. With that, The Root welcomed members of the Wu Tang Clan, as well of some cast of Wu-Tang: An…
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Joy-Ann Reid: Everything About Donald Trump Is a Con
Joy-Ann Reid sees Donald Trump in very clear and simple terms: a con man. Trump, as Reid explains in her op-ed video with The Root, is a con man with a track record of screwing over people with his various failed business deals who ended up convincing enough Americans that his mediocrity, masked as entrepreneurial…
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Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Is Set for a Rare Revival On the Stage Where It All Began, NYC’s Public Theater
While it’s widely celebrated as a major work of American theater, Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf is rarely professionally performed onstage. That’s changing beginning in October when the choreopoem will be revived at New York’s Public Theater, the stage where For Colored Girls premiered over…
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Hollywood Once Told Francis Ford Coppola The Cotton Club Had 'Too Many Black Stories'. Now, He's Restoring Them
You know how kids have a list of things they want to be when they grow up and toggle between them until they actually do grow up and (maybe) decide on one thing? Well, for me, one of those things was a tap dancer. Now, this urge was completely inside of my head, as I…
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'I Am What I Am': In Concert and Conversation, Audra McDonald Pulls Back the Curtain on a Brilliant Career
When you get an opportunity to see Audra McDonald perform, you take it. The record-breaking six-time Tony Award winner, Grammy and Emmy winner and 2015 National Medal of Arts recipient has conquered both stage and screen with her acting and singing and is lauded across the globe as one of the brightest lights of Broadway.…
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Peace Is a Lifestyle: Erica Ford’s Peace Mobile Is Healing a Community Affected by Gun Violence, One Ride at a Time
Like fellow Queens, N.Y., native, L.L. Cool J, Erica Ford has been here for years. She’s been in these streets. Always a standout, with gray tresses since she was in her 20s, Ford has long been at the intersection of hip-hop and activism. At turns playful and stern, like a drill sergeant, sis is serious…
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Google Celebrates Late, Great Blues Legend B.B. King on 94th Birthday
Never ever forget the great ones who came before you. We give props to the folks at Google for keeping some of our historical events and figures at the forefront through its remarkable Google Doodle initiative, which dates back to 1998 and aims to “enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to the faces of…