culture
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Black Judge, Black Jury? Why the 1st Trial in Freddie Gray’s Death Is Different
With the trial of William Porter set to begin Wednesday, the first of six trials in the death of Freddie Gray, it is clear that this will be no ordinary case. This is in part because Judge Barry Williams, 53, is no ordinary judge. During the jury-selection process, Williams asked a pool of hundreds of…
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Mary Jane Recap: Stay Woke
Turns out, selling out doesn’t always come with a clear conscience. We all knew that Mary Jane’s “I didn’t sell out; I bought in” line was hollow words. M.J. finally figured it out, and it only took one self-righteous, conscious college student to do it. M.J. sure knows how to clear a table. It must…
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The Wiz Live! Brings Iconic Musical to a New Generation
As far as iconic black-cast plays and musicals go, few are as universally loved as The Wiz. The initial soulful production of the American classic on Broadway in 1975 won seven Tonys and made Stephanie Mills a star. Her rendition of “Home” is still a classic. In 1978 the film version from Motown and Universal…
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Broadway Revival Brings a Different Shade to The Color Purple
If, in 1982, shortly after Alice Walker’s landmark novel, The Color Purple, was published, someone had forecast that the book would be turned into a movie, then a Broadway musical, then revived in London and brought to Broadway again, that someone would have been carted away or at least had his or her crystal ball…
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What’s the Smartest Way to Invest $10,000 or $50,000?
Harriette Cole is the author of the book of meditations 108 Stitches: Words We Live By and a contributing editor at The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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Pie That Doesn’t Melt, Lacrosse and Other White-People Stuff
Don’t let my Neon Carrot-crayon complexion fool you. Both of my parents are Negroes. Mind you, they’re also Neon Carrot Negroes: Pops is Louisiana Creole—a (literal) cotton-picking product of the rural Jim Crow South. Mama was raised around the housing project culture of Detroit in the 1950s and ’60s. I was born in Detroit near…
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15 Powerful Works of Fiction Published by Black Authors in 2015
T Hope Wabuke is a Southern California-based writer and a contributing editor at The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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5 Valuable Lessons I Learned From Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes
Last month, power TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes released her first book, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person, in which she reveals how a stray observation said to her by her older sister during the Thanksgiving of 2013—“You never say yes to anything”—challenged her to…
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12 Things You May Not Have Known About The Wiz
The Wiz Live! airs on NBC on Thursday with a star-studded lineup certain to have you ready to take a trip down the yellow brick road. The Broadway musical-turned-movie-turned-live TV musical features a newcomer as Dorothy (Shanice Williams), a Wiz vet as Aunt Em (Stephanie Mills, who played Dorothy in the 1975 Broadway musical), and…
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True Stories: Positive Black Women
Though there has been some progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS, the situation is still a dire one for black America. The battle to eradicate the stigma that is attached to the illness continues to be an uphill one. In the United States, African Americans represent approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population but…