culture

When family members attended Sharolyn Jackson’s funeral and burial August 3, some noted that her nose looked thinner, the Associated Press reports. They, however, figured something happened during the embalming process. But they were wrong. The truth is far stranger: The woman they buried that day was not, in fact, their loved one but a…

Attorneys on Friday agreed to drop a discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit against Paula Deen, who lost contracts with the Food Network and other partners after she said under oath that she had used racial slurs in the past, the Associated Press reports. A document filed in U.S. District Court in Savannah said both sides…

(The Root) — On an historic day in August 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered these words on the state of racial affairs in America a century after the Emancipation Proclamation: “One hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled…

(The Root) — In the opening line of his “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. predicted that the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom would “go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history…

People should simply attribute Georgia school bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff’s heroic efforts to her humanity rather than to her being a strong black woman, Tressie McMillan Cottom writes at her tressiemc.com blog. Tuff is an amazing woman who did what we can each only hope to be brave enough to do when so many lives are at…

Martin Luther King Jr.’s superlative “I Have a Dream” speech “is not free, alas,” Mother Jones‘ Lauren Williams writes. It will not be in the public domain until 2038, and until then, commercial enterprises wishing to use it must pay his estate a hefty fee. I have a dream that on the 50th anniversary of the…

(The Root) — Like many of the films in the “it’s complicated” historical-fiction genre, Lee Daniels’ The Butler uses broad strokes to paint a decidedly unpretty picture — the cinematic equivalent of an Instagram filter. But despite the artistic liberties and Forest Gump-like rendering of the life of White House butler Cecil Gaines — based…

(The Root) — “Although we can trace my maternal grandmother’s heritage back to Europe, she periodically received family-reunion invitations from another family with the last name ‘Ellzey,’ which was her husband’s last name. Turns out there must have been a slave owner named Ellzey, too, because I’m pretty sure my grandma was the only white…

We are all familiar with Kanye West’s aversion to interviews, and he very rarely enjoys talking about his personal life through anything but his music. When family calls, though, he will do anything. On Friday, West will appear on the season finale of Kris, the talk show hosted by Kris Jenner, the grandmother of North…