history

July marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most far-reaching emancipatory reform in American history—passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the coming months, many in our nation will rightly honor the heroes of the civil rights movement whose courage and leadership helped secure passage of this seminal piece of legislation. And as we…

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. 85: Why was the summer…

Every year I ask my Twitter friends, “How are y’all celebrating Juneteenth?” Usually I get just a handful of half-baked responses and a few retweets. “Go to some crappy festival,” one Californian said. “Being black,” said a college friend from Atlanta. And my favorite response over the years has come from one of my brother’s…

This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. In a quiet park in the nation’s capital, the paternal figure…

Five years ago I stood in a slave castle on Senegal’s Gorée Island at the infamous Door of No Return. Our guide told us that once Africans walked through this doorway, which opened right into the Atlantic Ocean, they were gone forever. During the slave trade, shackled blacks were led out the door and forced…

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. 84:…

Last summer, when the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, the decision dealt a major blow to the courageous efforts of thousands of civil rights activists who, during a summer 50 years ago, weathered the hostile Jim Crow South to help blacks in Mississippi reclaim their civil rights.…

How can one find the place where one’s ancestors originated when the names of locations change over time?  My family oral history indicates that William Dawkins (1790-1872), who died in Union County, S.C., went from his plantation in Fish Dam, S.C., to a place called Maddox/Mattox in Virginia and brought back four enslaved women. Dawkins,…

Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered on June 12, 1994, in Brown Simpson’s Los Angeles home. Suspicion quickly fell on Simpson’s ex-husband and NFL Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson, who was said to have been enraged by his ex’s relationships. From Simpson’s slow-speed chase on a Los Angeles freeway to Johnnie…

This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. A native of the African Congo squats before a log, his…