history

You can read this quote, from Nat King Cole’s statement about the cancellation of his TV show in 1957, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read how the quote is referenced here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He…

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. Taken for granted today, the pictorial commemoration of the family was…

You can read this quote by Nelson Mandela, from a statement he gave while in prison in 1985, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He…

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. 70: What started the black newspaper…

You can read this quote by Thelonious Monk, from an interview with Down Beat in 1971, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read how the quote is referenced here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the…

You can read this quote from Billie Holiday, from her book Lady Sings the Blues (1956), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief…

You can read this quote by Ralph Ellison, from his book of essays Shadow and Act (1964), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief…

I have reason to believe that I can connect myself to the Daughters of the American Revolution. I am just having the toughest time making the provable connection. My great-great-grandfather Nicholas Jackson Jr. (born around 1865 in Howard County, Md.) was married to Nettie Derrickson (born around July 1872). Derrickson’s mother was Nellie A. Shockley…

You can read this quote by Gwendolyn Brooks, from her poem “A Song in the Front Yard” (1945), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He…

It has been more than a half-century since the African continent began freeing itself from the scourge of colonialism. Ghana, my country, led the movement toward liberation by becoming the first sub-Saharan nation to gain its independence. And today marks the 57th anniversary of that occasion. When the clock struck midnight and Great Britain’s Gold…