black history
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Returned: My Year of Return and Rebirth
I am one of the disrespectful negroes who returned to Ghana and left the rest of you unsuspecting negroes back in triflin’, dumb, and dirty-ass America, and was admonished, defriended, blocked, and unfollowed by Damon because of it. While I didn’t intend for my social media feeds to add to anyone’s FOMO-turned-existential crisis, I am…
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Visiting Cape Coast and Elmina ‘Slave Castles’: In Everlasting Memory of the Anguish of Our Ancestors
When I was 12 or 13 and living in Frankfurt, Germany, my parents loaded my siblings and me into the car and we drove about four hours south and east to a small-ish town in the Bavarian region that was the site of the first concentration camp opened in Nazi Germany: Dachau. Built in 1933…
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Black History, According to White People
Mithridates the Great was one of the Roman Empire’s greatest foes and claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great, who died by poisoning. Mithridates’ father died from poison. His father died from poison. His mother tried to poison him. Needless to say, Mithridates the Great was obsessed with poison. So, the king created…
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Whitney Houston and Notorious B.I.G. to Be Inducted Into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
If you’re professionally involved in music, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is probably the endgame for you. In 2019, Janet Jackson was added to the Hall of Fame. Well, it’s a new year and that means it’s time for yet another round of inductees! The Class of 2020 inductees are…
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ABFF Honors 2020: Louis Gossett Jr. and Lena Waithe to Receive Special Hollywood Trailblazer Honors
Just about every award ceremony hands out awards, then also hands out extra special awards that stand out from the routine awards. For example, the Golden Globes have their Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Grammys have their Lifetime Achievement Award. The blackest film festival to ever do it, the American Black Film Festival (ABFF)…
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Check Out Octavia Spencer as Madam C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Self-Made Millionaire
Do you smell the scent of hot combs in the air? Well, that’s because Madam C.J. Walker’s televised biopic is coming this year! We’ve been waiting for this one since it was announced back in 2018 and now we have a release date and a sneak peek of Spencer as the Madam herself. This spring,…
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#NotAllHistorians: Some White People Are Upset That the New York Times' 1619 Project Isn’t Centered in Whiteness
“For 400 years, we have been told that black people are a problem. We are indoctrinated into this lie from the moment we take our first breath. No people have been more legislated against and studied than black Americans. That is because our very existence in our country gives lie to the exceptionality mythology of…
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Forever Fly Jock: The Iconic Tom Joyner Retires After 25 Years on the Radio
Now you know we can’t start this blog without a proper intro—hit it! Oh oh oh (oh oh oh oh) it’s the Tom Joyner Morning Showwwww! After 25 years of starting each morning with flyness, Tom Joyner signed off on his very last show Friday, Dec. 13, 2019. The perfect combination of entertainment and education,…
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Rihanna Can Take a Bow as the First Black Woman Whose Album Spent 200 Weeks on the Billboard 200 List
Rihanna’s lucky number of the day is 200. Two hundred, as in the number of weeks her album, ANTI, has spent on the Billboard 200 list. This is a huge deal because it means Rihanna is now the first black woman with an album to last that long on the list in the chart’s history.…
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Hollywood Executive Reportedly Suggested Julia Roberts Play Harriet Tubman
Once upon a time in a magical land of vegans, earthquakes and 25-minute journeys to everywhere, there was a Hollywood executive who thought it was acceptable to have Julia Roberts play Harriet Tubman. According to EW, Gregory Allen Howard has been trying to make Harriet for a month of Sundays. During his arduous process, Howard…