culture
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Review of Balm: 3 Who Begin New Lives After the Civil War
Dolen Perkins-Valdez made a name for herself with her New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed debut novel, Wench. Inspired by the real-life Tawawa House, a “resort” for white slave owners to vacation with their black sex slaves during pre-Civil War America, Wench was a spellbinding tale of one of the darkest aspects of our…
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The Responsible Celebrity: Actors, Filmmakers Talk About Art, Activism at Blackout Festival
What responsibility do artists have to our changing times? That was one of the questions that came up throughout the first annual Blackout for Human Rights Music and Film Festival in Los Angeles on Saturday. Blackout for Human Rights is a collective of activists, artists, filmmakers, musicians and more who are committing their time and…
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Watch: Oprah Winfrey, Eddie Murphy Score Roles in Richard Pryor Biopic
Oprah Winfrey and Eddie Murphy are confirmed to join Mike Epps and Kate Hudson in a new biopic about legendary comedian Richard Pryor, according to the Daily Mail. The report says that Winfrey has been cast as Pryor’s grandmother Marie Carter, who ran a brothel where she raised the legendary comic, and Murphy will play…
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Les Miserables Actor Kyle Jean-Baptiste Dies at 21
A 21-year-old actor, who made a spectacular Broadway debut in the latest revival of Les Miserables, died Friday after falling from a fire escape at his mother’s New York City home, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Kyle Jean-Baptiste made history last month when he first appeared as an understudy in the lead role of Jean…
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Olympic Gold-Medal Swimmer Who Almost Drowned as a Child Is Devoted to Teaching Kids How to Swim
Two-time Olympic gold-medal swimmer Cullen Jones almost drowned when he was 5. His parents had taken him to Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Pennsylvania, where he went down a slide into a pool. “I flipped upside down, and I hadn’t had lessons, I didn’t know what to do, and I was underwater for about 30…
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From Raunchy Rap to a Political Awakening: The Book of Luke Tells the Tales
Not many people who hear the name “Luther Campbell” think of a politically engaged community and youth advocate. Instead, the Southern hip-hop pioneer, whose group 2 Live Crew introduced its audience to bikini-clad women and the sexually charged Caribbean and Latin rhythms of Campbell’s native Miami, is more infamously known for yelling, “Don’t stop, get…
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Shelter From the Storm: Katrina’s Impact on Houston and Atlanta
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, black New Orleanians quickly scattered across the country—a sister’s house here, a cousin’s couch there, a college roommate’s spare room. More than 175,000 black residents left New Orleans in the year following the storm, according to FiveThirtyEight. Even though the city’s total population has returned to 70 percent of…
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Fresh Dressed: 10 Reasons You Should Watch This Stylish Hip-Hop Fashion Doc
After flipping through the September fall fashion issues of my favorite magazines with black “it” girls such as Beyoncé, Kerry Washington, Serena and Misty Copeland on their covers, I’m unusually interested in clothes. All that paging through magazines got me wondering: Where are all the black-owned fashion brands? Yes, of course well-known black brands still…
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Where Are They Now? 10 Years After Hurricane Katrina, a Look Back at How 9 Key Players Responded
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast 10 years ago, it would become the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, causing an estimated $108 billion in damages. It would also be one of the deadliest. The storm caused approximately 1,833 deaths across five states, with the most casualties in Louisiana: 1,577. Katrina was a Category…
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Follow the Money: How New Orleans’ Charter School System Influences Both Economic Development and Injustice
In part 1 of our series on post-Katrina New Orleans’ public education and charter school systems, “‘Like Another Katrina’: The Charter School Debate Fractures New Orleans Along Lines of Race and Class,” The Root took a comprehensive look at the educational, cultural and racial effects of the charter school system, which rapidly expanded in the…