culture

From now until the end of the president’s term, the race to see who gets the rights to build the presidential library and museum on a college campus is going to be intense, even if that day is still more than three years away. Early money has the University of Chicago leading the pack, since…

A Chicago police officer has been indicted for the shooting death of Rekia Boyd, an unarmed 22-year-old woman who was shot in 2012 while she and her friends were leaving a party, DNAinfo Chicago reports. Officer Dante Servin, 45, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct. Servin was…

A search of George Zimmerman’s girlfriend’s home turned up multiple weapons and more than 100 rounds of ammunition, according to court documents filed Monday, CNN reports. Zimmerman was arrested last week at the home after a domestic dispute in which it was alleged that he pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe. He was…

Americans have notoriously short memories when it comes to race and history, especially black history. And it’s in that context that Harvard professor and The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., has looked back through time to bring us The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, a six-part documentary film, airing on PBS, that concludes…

Several weeks ago a black woman in Louisiana was kidnapped by her boyfriend when she went to pick up their child from day care. The police did a requisite search for her but came up empty. That’s when her family got involved. An uncle and other male relatives tracked the woman down to an abandoned…

The death of a dear friend last week reminded me of a small incident, a long time ago, that might shed some fresh light on the seemingly endless debate over racial respect and who can and can’t use the word “nigger.” The friend was John Egerton, with whom I worked during the early 1970s at…

It seems fitting that the man who would become the keeper of the world’s largest repository of African-American history came into life already shaped by the past. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad, a man who led the Nation of Islam, mentored Malcolm X and pushed black communities to become more self-sufficient.…

I’m into cemeteries. This is an accidental development. When my dad died in 2011, he left behind a photo of himself and eight other African-American seniors standing shoulder to shoulder behind two headstones. One is inscribed “Matthew Palmer. Died Feb 26, 1927, Aged 86.” I knew only that Matthew was my great-grandfather. No one else…