history
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Was the Author of The Three Musketeers a Black Man?
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. 83: Which famous 19th-century French…
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Help Me Find My Hidden Black Ancestor!
I am white, but DNA testing at both 23andMe and Family Tree DNA has turned up a small amount of African ancestry. So far, my attempts to find a black ancestor have failed. Family Tree DNA is showing that I’m 1 percent sub-Saharan African, and 23andMe is showing between 1.2 percent and 1.4 percent sub-Saharan…
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Shotgun Behind the Door: How Armed Black Southerners Helped Fight for Civil Rights
Most history students never learn that even Martin Luther King Jr.—arguably history’s greatest spokesperson on behalf of nonviolence—had armed guards stationed outside of his home and a pistol tucked in his sofa in 1955 when he emerged as the leader of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. But he did. As time went on, he came to…
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Freedom Summer: If MTV Had Existed in 1964
Someone got the bright idea in 1981 to create an entire channel devoted to music videos and called it Music Television, or MTV—but showing artists performing on TV to sell records has been going on practically since rock and roll, and TV, were invented. As we were looking at ways to mark the 50th…
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How a Beautifully Detailed Map Hides the Horror of a Looming Slave Trade
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. Though crowded with lively detail and a wealth of place names,…
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Was History’s Richest Person Black?
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. 82: Who was history’s wealthiest…
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The Science of Knowing Who We Really Are
For nearly all of her life, Kathleen Carpenter had thought of herself as white, specifically, one-quarter German and three-quarters from the British Isles. But, after doing an Ancestry.com DNA test, the 70-year-old New Yorker now has an entirely new history that includes some North African DNA. In addition, her brother’s test showed a small percentage…
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Are Slave Narratives Useful to My Family Tree Research?
Dear Readers, In the past we have advised you to take advantage of holiday gatherings and the summer-reunion season to collect information from your relatives about family history. Get your kin talking, pull out a digital voice recorder, and before you know it, you will have begun a collection of oral histories that will provide…
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Maya Angelou: A Phenomenal Woman Passes On
One of the United States’ most prolific and beloved authors and poets has died at the age of 86. Maya Angelou was a Renaissance woman whose life inspired six autobiographies, including her internationally celebrated first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou was found unresponsive in her Winston-Salem, N.C., home. Her death comes…