culture
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Watch: 3 Baltimore Teens Injured in Fight With School Police Officer
A Northeast Baltimore school is investigating a fight involving a female school police officer and three middle school girls that ended with the students being rushed to the hospital. According to security video footage obtained and released by WBAL-TV, the incident, which happened in October, began inside Vanguard Middle School between the school officer and…
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Nina Simone: A Complex and Troubled Legacy
What Happened, Miss Simone? takes an unflinching look at the sometimes troubled life and complex legacy of the singer, pianist and civil rights activist. At one point in her career, Nina Simone was a celebrated performer playing Carnegie Hall, but fast-forward, and she’s singing in dive bars in Paris for a couple of hundred dollars…
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A Detroit Collage: How a Graffiti Artist, Apparel Company and Nonprofit Are Helping to Keep Art in Schools
As Detroit continues to suffer from the scorching effects of bankruptcy, art—a cultural underpinning of the iconic town—remains strong, with artists, particularly urban artists, thriving amid the ashes. And yet even as the urban art scene flourishes, the art curriculum in schools has all but smoldered out, leaving students with little or no hope of…
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Straight Out of Brownsville: A Student’s Viral Image Salutes Revolutionary Brooklyn School Principal Nadia Lopez
Updated Jan. 29, 2015: In fewer than five days, more than $1 million has been raised for Motts Hall Bridges Academy; that’s close to an IndieGoGo record! The initial goal was $100,000 to send MHBA students to Harvard University for a visit. Once it reached $350,000, it was determined by Principal Lopez and Humans of…
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X: A Novel: How Malcolm X Grew From ‘Little’ to the Leader of a Revolution
In medieval Europe, when a man vanquished his enemy, he killed the enemy’s wife, the enemy’s children and any other kin he could find. It was brutal; it was terrible. But it was done so that the enemy’s family would have no support, strength or even knowledge of who the man was. So that no…
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Maintain Marital Bliss by Compromising on Conflicting Family Obligations
My husband’s younger brother is turning 30, lives in another state and is planning a night-out party. My family reunion is the same weekend and I’d like us to go. He says he is going to hang with his brother and not go to the reunion. Can you weigh in here? Am I wrong for…
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Violence Against Black Transgender Women Goes Largely Ignored
Elle Hearns was hoping to share in the collective pain other black people were feeling during a Trayvon Martin rally in Columbus, Ohio, in April 2012. But instead of feeling embraced, she said both men and women around her engaged in very loud, transphobic conversations and encroached on her personal space. “It made me feel…
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Read Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Acceptance Speech for the duPont Award
Editor’s note: The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was one of 14 recipients Tuesday night of an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for his six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Here’s his acceptance speech for the award: Thank you so very much, Cynthia McFadden, for that very kind introduction. I sat…
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Ernest J. Gaines: A Great American Author Pays It Forward to a New Generation of Black Writers
Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 to a family of sharecroppers at River Lake Plantation in Oscar, La. They lived in the workers quarters on a dirt road lined on both sides with two-room cabins built by their slave ancestors. There was no running water or inside toilet, no electricity. Five months of the…
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Poll: 50 Percent of Americans Say Race Relations Have Gotten Worse Since Obama Took Office
Nearly 50 percent of Americans say that race relations in the U.S. “have gotten worse” since President Barack Obama took office, and a mere 15 percent say that race relations have improved under Obama’s tenure, results from an Al-Jazeera and Monmouth University poll reveal. People’s opinions about the state of race relations differed along racial lines. “White…