history
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Which Black Actor Was Paid to Be White?
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 97: Which 20th-century black…
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Angela Bassett Traces Roots Back to Slavery
Three well-known African Americans will have their family histories explored on this week’s episode of Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. According to PBS, “Angela Bassett, Valerie Jarrett and Nas’ roots run back into the heart of slavery, revealing there is no single narrative and challenging our preconceptions of an era that has…
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Beyond Ellis Island Records: How Do I Find Immigrant Forebears?
All of my grandparents emigrated from St. Kitts. Records of my paternal grandparents are available on the Ellis Island website between 1912 and 1922, but none of my maternal grandparents can be located, although, based on the 1910 U.S. federal census and the 1915 New York state census, they arrived in the United States between…
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Cornel West’s New Book, Black Prophetic Fire, Drives Home His Critique of Obama
Cornel West is back. And with his newest book, Black Prophetic Fire: In Dialogue With and Edited by Christa Buschendorf—a series of conversations about the exemplars of the black prophetic tradition against racial and economic injustice—West reminds us why he remains one of the best-known, most controversial and most important public intellectuals of our time.…
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Laura, the Black Model Who Graced the Art of 19th-Century France
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. No more self-assured statement of middle-class domesticity could be imagined than this charming tableau of maternity and childhood bliss set…
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Did a Black Man Invent Crest Toothpaste?
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 96: Which…
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Ferguson’s Marchers Have Shown Us That We’re Not Done Marching
I thought marches were done. Over the past 20 years, most of the marches that we’ve seen, big and small, have seemed more like stagecraft than the true reflection of a current struggle. The urgency that characterized historic civil rights marches seemed to have gone away and been replaced by careful scheduling and marketing—like last…
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My Ancestor’s Tragedy Made the Papers. What Happened Next?
I am trying to determine where Willie Wise Hargrove, the wife of my great-granduncle, died and is buried. In 1910 Willie Wise was living in Charlotte, N.C., with her husband, Shedrick Hargrove. In June of that year he died. The death certificate indicated, “Suicide reported to be.” I researched the local papers, suspecting that the…
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Ben Jealous and Actress Khandi Alexander Find Their Roots
On Tuesday’s episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Benjamin Jealous, former president of the NAACP, learns how his great-grandfather Peter G. Morgan, a free black man, was forced to purchase his own wife and family in order to keep them safe. Scandal actress Khandi Alexander never knew her…
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A Tribute to a British Politician Who Fought to End the Slave Trade
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. In the coming year, one of the more nuanced anniversaries of the enduring struggle against slavery is slated to occur.…