culture

Nigerian officials believe that they have located the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped last month by an Islamist militant group but are hesitant to implement a forceful rescue due to worries that doing so may endanger them, CNN reports.  “We want our girls back. I can tell you that our military can and will do…

There are unpopular opinions, and then there are unpopular black opinions. Have you ever been talking to your friends and let one slip? Maybe you’ve come out as anti-Scandal or, worse, turned the station when a Beyoncé song came on. The backlash that can come from speaking your truth is enough to make you worry…

Who says summer reading has to be fluff? There are so many recent titles and reprinted standouts tackling the black experience—in poetry, biography and works of fiction—that even the most voracious readers can barely keep up. Pack one of these to turn a trip to the pool into an inspiring escape, and get your sun…

If there was any doubt left that the Obama era didn’t usher in a postracial society, it was erased in the last few weeks by the spectacle that was the Donald Sterling affair. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone at this point that we have not yet reached the promised land of equality and racial blindness…

On May 26, the day that would have been his 88th birthday, the iconic trumpeter Miles Davis was honored in New York City with the unveiling of a street, Miles Davis Way, on the West 77th Street block where he lived in Manhattan from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. “The contribution he made to…

More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about race in America and invoked the imagery of this nation’s natural beauty to inspire and encourage collective action and to implore our sense of justice to “roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Five years later, in 1968, just hours…

My television raised me. I’m not criticizing my mom here. A single mother, she worked tirelessly to give her only son whatever he wanted and needed, and that meant she was busy. Often, the TV stood in for both of my parents. I began to look to it for anything I needed to know about…

Memorial Day is an unofficial marker that the year is almost half over, that the bathing suit you swore you would fit into come summertime still doesn’t fit, and that your New Year’s resolution to work out every day … well, yeah, see above-mentioned bathing suit. But don’t let the gloomy blues of life get…

The Rev. Al Sharpton on Saturday defended a 14-year-old Bronx, N.Y., boy who reportedly talked so much trash after his arrest on an assault charge that a New York Police Department sergeant allegedly pushed him, causing him to fall through a storefront window, the Daily News reports. Speaking at a news conference at his National…

Houston elected officials, civil rights leaders and residents gathered on Saturday to attend the unveiling of a bronze statue of Martin Luther King Jr., ending decades of drama over its location and lack of funds to complete it, according to KHOU. A large crowd, including Martin Luther King III, was on hand for the unveiling…