history

Who was the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award in a leading role? Two black women had been honored before at the Academy Awards, both in the best supporting actress category: Hattie McDaniel, in 1939, the first African American ever to be nominated for an Oscar, and to win; and Ethel…

My family has lived all of our lives as “white” people, but recently we were pretty surprised to learn through DNA testing that my father and I both have non-European DNA; my dad has more than 3 percent sub-Saharan-African DNA. While researching my father’s paternal line, I was able to connect my second great-grandfather back…

Malcolm X is being remembered this week across black America on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. It is a sober time to commemorate the murder of a sober, serious man who fought for the liberation of African people. But he was a man—one who had a great sense of humor, a winning smile, and…

This recently auctioned letter, dated March 9, 1950, from Malcolm X was written to “My Dearly Beloved Brother Raymond.” Raymond has never been identified.

Saturday will mark a half-century since the untimely death of one of the most important intellectuals, organizers and revolutionaries that black America has ever produced. And on the 50th anniversary of his assassination, Malcolm X remains as relevant to our times as he was in his. We still don’t know all the details surrounding Malcolm’s…

This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Reduced to its essential details, the slim lines of an 18th-century sailing vessel reveal the shocking accommodation of its interior…

There is a painting from 1920 of New Orleans Vodou priestess Marie Laveaux. The solemn woman in the portrait gazes, almost mournfully, at us with just a hint of the power and mayhem that resided behind those eyes. It was in 1830s New Orleans that Marie Laveaux emerged as a prominent spiritualist and healer. She…

Who was the first African American to drive a U.S. mail coach? Cascade, Mont., was the quintessential frontier town of the Wild West, packed with saloons and home to a handful of settlers and gold seekers who built up the area after the railroad arrived. As statehood was approaching in 1889, all of Montana had…

I wonder if my ancestors went the wrong way in their search for land sometime between the mid-1840s and early 1850s. They were black, and they went from Mexico to Natchez, Miss., during slavery. Why? My great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Hinyard/Henyard was born about 1833. His sister Milly (Hinyard) McFarland was born in 1837, and his brother…

This year is the 100th anniversary of what is now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the organization founded by Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950). Woodson is the founder of Negro History Week, which he created in 1926. It’s officially been known as Black History Month since 1976. Woodson had many…