culture
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Being Mary Jane Recap: Lee Meets the Parents
Tonight, Being Mary Jane was an ode to Black History Month. You could bullet-point all the nods to black history and civil rights leaders that were featured in this episode, because that is how many of the scenes in this episode seemed to be introduced. It was as though the show had a list of…
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Watch: I Love My Black Love
For Black History Month, The Root is celebrating blackness in a new The Root TV series called I Love My Blackness. In the series we celebrate black skin, black style, black friendship and black love. Our first video of the series celebrated our love of our black skin and the understanding that black is gold.…
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Watch: In Focus With Moonlight Director Barry Jenkins, Who’s Vying for Oscar on Sunday
Editor’s note: In Focus is a video series showcasing the new wave of black filmmakers. Earlier this year, before Barry Jenkins’ critically acclaimed film Moonlight went on to earn eight Academy Award nominations—including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay—the writer-director sat down with The Root to discuss how he got involved with the…
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Maya Angelou’s Son and Grandson Explain Why a Documentary on Such a ‘Phenomenal Woman’ Is So Necessary Now
Some people’s lives are bigger than they are; that was certainly the case with Maya Angelou. This “phenomenal woman” packed in a lot of living even for someone blessed with a relatively long journey of 86 years. That’s what’s most clear in the first-ever documentary on her life, Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, airing…
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Maybe the Earth Is Flat
This past weekend during the National Basketball Association’s All-Star festivities, Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star Kyrie Irving appeared on the NBA podcast Road Tripping With RJ & Channing and said, “The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. … It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you, it’s right in front of our faces.…
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VH1’s The Breaks Holds Up a Mirror to the Early Days of Hip-Hop
In the late ’90s, I went to a meeting at one of the biggest record labels. I was scheduled to do a quick interview with the president. I knocked on his door and he waved me in. Then he sized me up and fixated on my navy-blue messenger bag with the Rawkus Records logo stitched…
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Living With History: W.E.B. Du Bois’ Great-Grandson Explains Why That Department of Education Tweet Was Truly Horrible
Editor’s note: For Black History Month, The Root is speaking to the relatives of our most cherished African-American heroes in a series called Living With History. To open the series, we interviewed a descendant of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Last week we did a Q&A with the descendants of Ida B. Wells. Today…
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Morehouse at 150: Destroying 7 Myths That Challenge the Excellence of HBCUs
HBCUs have a rich history and powerful mystique that continue to shape African-American culture and inspire academic success. In popular culture, HBCUs have provided the context for movies, such as School Daze and Drumline, and television series, such as A Different World and The Quad. Most of America’s civil rights giants were educated at HBCUs,…
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The Incredible Legend of the Black Church
Today, for Black History Month, I’d like to tell you about something that has been long forgotten in the legacy of Africans in America. You may have heard these stories and dismissed them as fabulous folklore or passed-down legends that bloomed into fable over the years, but trust me, this ain’t no Paul Bunyan fairy…