culture
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#TheRootTrip: To Experience This Shreveport, La., Dining Spot, You’ll Have to Use Your Imagination
As I rolled into Shreveport, La., my first Green Book location was simply noted in the guidebook as the intersection of Pierre and Looney, where the Grand Terrace Restaurant once stood. Remember, as part of #TheRootTrip, I’m not preselecting these locations, so what I find is what I find, and I do my research after…
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#TheRootTrip: Fill ’er Up Quick at Swift, One of the Few Black-Owned Gas Stations in Texas
Guess what, guys? I found another black-owned gas station! Swift Fast Food & Gas at 801 W. Kearney St. in Mesquite, Texas, is ready for your business. Not only do they have gas like any other gas station, as well as a full convenience store where you can buy all the chips, sodas and candy…
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Tracing Your Roots: Were Slaves’ Surnames Like Brands?
We made a surprising discovery while addressing a question about how slaves got their last names. Dear Professor Gates: Were the surnames of enslaved people changed when they were sold, or were they allowed to keep the surnames of their former slave owners? It would seem plausible that a slave’s name was like a brand…
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All Eyez on Me Star Demetrius Shipp Jr. on Being Tupac, a Role He Seemed Destined to Play
To say that a Tupac biopic has been a long time coming is an understatement. Perhaps few know that as well as Demetrius Shipp Jr., the icon’s “blink twice” doppelgänger who was originally cast in the role in 2011 and waited through a handful of directors, including John Singleton and Carl Franklin, before Benny Boom,…
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Black Music Month Playlist No. 3: All Eyez on Me
Editor’s note: Every Friday for the month of June, aka African-American Music Appreciation Month, aka Black Music Month, we’ll be creating a Spotify playlist based on the news of the week. Check out the stories behind playlist No. 1 and playlist No. 2. This week began with Bill Cosby’s legal team delivering a six-minute defense…
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#TheRootTrip: Dallas Vegan and Juice Spot Has Recipe for Success
Have you ever walked into a black business and immediately felt the authentic passion of the owners? How they hold a genuine love for their service and the black community? If you’ve never experienced that, then I suggest that you run, not walk, to Recipe, a new vegan and juice spot at 1831 S. Ewing…
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#TheRootTrip: The Island Spot Serves Up the Flavor of Jamaica in the Heart of Black Dallas
I’m a simple man. If there are oxtails within reach, then I’m going to eat said oxtails. See? Not complicated. So when readers said that I just had to visit the Island Spot, where they have oxtails, in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, well, it seemed like a great suggestion. Founded by Richard Thomas—a…
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#TheRootTrip: A Police Station May Have Replaced the Hotel Jim, but Not the Legacy of the Black Owner
You can’t expect to find every address from the 1957 Negro Travelers’ Green Book intact. Sixty years’ worth of city renewal, knocking down buildings for other buildings and then knocking down those buildings a few decades later, can transform a block. As such, the building at 413 Fifth St. in Fort Worth, Texas, isn’t the…
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#TheRootTrip: Not Much to See at the Evans Tourist Home … Unless You Surprise a Neighbor
This is the Evans Tourist Home in Fort Worth, Texas, listed in the 1957 Negro Travelers’ Green Book. I wasn’t able to find out much about the person who lived here, and honestly, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about this house. It’s just a regular house, now turned into a duplex, in a historic black district…
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#TheRootTrip: Dallas Cowboys Fans Will Find a Room With the Perfect View at This Motel
Whooo!! I’d never been to 99 percent of the Green Book neighborhoods prior to this trip, but I knew where 1839 Fort Worth Ave. was. It was just off Hampton Road, where all of my Dallas relatives live (and, though I can’t prove it, where I believe all 300,000 black folks in Dallas live ……