culture

These days, as the newspaper industry continues to tank, Hollywood, after years of a love (All the President’s Men) and hate (Absence of Malice) relationship with the press, is now serving up a new romantic hero: the print journalist. We saw Russell Crowe take on the mantle in State of Play, and now, in The…

Football fans going through withdrawal pains get a much needed fix this weekend when the madcap mayhem known as the NFL draft arrives to dominate center stage of the sports world. What with hours upon hours already spent on draft previews and mock drafts, as well as round the clock coverage on ESPN, the draft…

CNN: Bombings Kill More Than 70 in Iraq WP: Obama to Host Credit Card CEO, Lay Smack Down BB: US to BofA: ‘You Will Take This Merrill Or We Will Have a Problem’ VOA: Supreme Court to Hears Reverse Discrimination Case Against CT Fire Dept. BET: Don’t Pass the Collection Plate! Pastor’s $600K Salary Causes…

Baye Adofo-Wilson grew up in Paterson, N.J., about 20 minutes away from the rough and tumble of Newark, a city in constant need of rehabilitation and revitalization. In 1999, he took an interest in Newark’s Lincoln Park Coast neighborhood, an area that had been home to black artists and jazz music, and started the Lincoln…

April is usually a busy time for Brenda Palms-Barber. Bee season has started and that means tending to the beehives owned by her 2-year-old organization, Sweet Beginnings, LLC. What’s unique about Palms-Barber’s bees is that they are urban-raised, creating their honeycombs in the heart of Chicago. Once their honey is ripe, Palms-Barber and her employees…

What do you get when you combine phat beats and positive rhymes with organic food and alternative energy? Zakiya Harris’ music festival and environmental workshop, Grind for the Green (G4G). Harris has used hip-hop music to encourage young people in the San Francisco Bay area to adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle. African-American and Hispanic youth,…

The green movement is about more than celebrities driving hybrid cars and building green homes. It’s about everyday people around the country doing grassroots work to reshape their streets, blocks, neighborhoods and cities. Through strategies ranging from hip-hop to children’s television to beekeeping—yes, beekeeping!—these 10 community leaders are making the green movement accessible, fun and…

In honor of Earth Day, The Root is going deep on the ties between black people and the earth. We dig in to everything from Michelle Obama’s potential impact on farming to how to plant gardens on housing project rooftops to creating green jobs in black neighborhoods. Guest writers Majora Carter, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Sen. John Kerry…

When Karen Monahan became a community organizer for the Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota (EJAM) in 2006, the notion of green jobs hadn’t yet made its way to the mainstream imagination. Monahan says working in a green industry in Minnesota, where there wasn’t a real green movement, was still very much a new idea.   By…

Kandi Mossett grew up running wild among the spectacular peaks and valleys of the North Dakota Badlands. She remembers spending most of her childhood days on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation swimming and climbing with friends. “I guess that’s probably why I’ve had this passion for doing something outdoors,” Mossett, 29, says.  But among the…