culture

My name is Sakinah Muhammad. I graduated from Temple University in May as a criminal-justice major with a minor in psychology. My next step is working for Houston Teach for America Corps while I attend graduate school at St. Thomas University. So much of where I am now is because of what I learned, and…

This summer marks the 25th anniversary of Do the Right Thing. June is also when part of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Stuyvesant Avenue—where the fim was shot—was renamed Do the Right Thing Way in honor of the film and its director, Brooklyn, N.Y.’s native son and outspoken gentrification critic Spike Lee. The Root’s multimedia editor, Nicole Cvetnic, went to Bed-Stuy to photograph the…

A former U.S. Army soldier, found guilty in the 2005 beating death of his 5-year-old daughter, was sentenced to life in prison Friday “by a Honolulu jury in Hawaii’s first such capital case since it became a state in 1959,” the Honolulu Star-Advertiser newspaper reported. The decision came after jurors told U.S. District Judge J. Michael…

Emmy Award-nominated actor Meschach Taylor, best known for his roles in Mannequin and Designing Women, died late Saturday at his Los Angeles-area home following a long bout with cancer, TMZ reports. The 67-year-old was surrounded by family. Taylor portrayed Anthony Bouvier, an assistant at the Sugarbaker interior design firm in Atlanta on the popular late…

Arizona’s 3TV on Saturday released disturbing video footage of an encounter between a black female Arizona State professor and a white campus police officer last month, which turned brutal after she asked why she was being stopped. Ersula Ore, whose research interests include cultural studies, was trying to cross the street to avoid construction when…

Handsome felon Jeremy Meeks’ plans to turn his viral mugshot into an enterprising endeavor may have hit a snag after his manager allegedly received death threats, TMZ reports. For reasons that have not yet been made clear, the manager reportedly has received about 30 harassing phone calls from so-called “gangster-sounding people,” TMZ reports. One caller…

Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed Do the Right Thing is celebrating its 25th anniversary this summer. The film explored issues of race and violence on one hot day in Brooklyn, N.Y. Since then, there’s been a resurgence of all things late ’80s and early ’90s, and it’s not just the fashion. All these years later, we’re still…

Two generations before Love & Hip Hop, Bobby Womack’s life could have been a reality television show. The now legendary story of Womack’s marriage to his mentor Sam Cooke’s widow, Barbara, months after Cooke’s shooting death, is just the entry point to a life that was as tragic as it was well lived. To his…

A 38-year-old Texas woman has been arrested and charged in the death of a girl who fell from on top of the woman’s car, where she had been forced to ride because her wet bathing suit potentially could have ruined the vehicle’s upholstery, the Daily News reports. Kisha Young was charged with intoxication assault, which…