black history month
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One Moment in Time: Only Once Have 2 Black Women Been Nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in the Same Year
Picture it: 1973, at the 45th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, attended by the most celebrated filmmakers, actors and creators in the world. Two cherished living queens in black history, Diana Ross and Cicely Tyson, sat in the audience awaiting the result as Raquel Welch and Gene Hackman rattled off the Best Actress nominees that year.…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 6: Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur
Publisher Synopsis: Written in solitary confinement, Kody Scott’s memoir of 16 years as a gang banger in Los Angeles was a searing best-seller and became a classic, published in 10 languages, with more than 300,000 copies in print in the United States alone. After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 4: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher synopsis: Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 3: Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham
Publisher Synopsis: Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha’s Vineyard. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 2: Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
Publisher Synopsis: Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried. When she doesn’t show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday wouldn’t…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 1: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Today is the first day of Black History Month, the annual celebration in these here United States of America where schools make kids learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Sprinkle in a few facts about a black person being the first person to do this or that, and before you know it,…
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Black Myself: Rhiannon Giddens Forms Supergroup ‘Our Native Daughters’ and Reclaims the Soul of Country Music
Four women. In 1966, Nina Simone famously sang the strikingly diverse yet intersecting narratives of four fictional-but-unforgettable black women. Now, four women who could be considered Simone’s spiritual daughters—award-winning musician and composer Rhiannon Giddens, acclaimed neo-folk singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah, classical and folk artist Leyla McCalla (formerly of Giddens’ Grammy-winning band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops), and…
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Goodbye British ‘Black History Month’? Cyber-Racism and Whitewashing Mar U.K. Celebration
For the past 20 years, October has marked the start of Black History Month in the U.K. (a whole 31 days! Imagine!) But this year, the event has been mired in controversy, with one prominent Black History Month site recently targeted by hackers and some local councils now opting to rebrand October as “Diversity Month.”…
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A ‘Double Standard’: Black Parkland, Fla., Students Speak Out on Black Lives Matter Message Being Shut Down by School Days Before Shooting
Just one week before a mass shooting would launch their school into the national spotlight, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School put on a Black History Month show at the Parkland, Fla., school. In a last-minute, unrehearsed addition, black student organizers wanted to address a letter that had appeared in the school’s newspaper. Titled…
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Watch: You Can Thank a Black Woman for Your Hulu Binge-Watching Habits
When we tell you to trust black women, it’s not just to shout our own praises. Black women have always been at the helm of anything great or convenient that you love. Seriously. Black women have changed eye surgery—shoutout to Dr. Patricia Bath! A black woman changed communication, creating the touch-tone phone, portable fax, caller…