history
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Quote of the Day: Josephine Baker on Her Body
You can read this quote by Josephine Baker, from her autobiography, Josephine (1977), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote 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 of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Help Me Find My Black-and-Apache Dad
“I was born in 1971 in Boulder, Colo. My mother, Terri Bailey (née Luther), is white (German-Irish) from Kentucky. My father, Gregory Allen Bailey, who left us when I was 2, is half-black on his mother’s side and perhaps half-Mescalero Apache through his father. (I was told Mescalero, but the Bailey name is only on…
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Quote of the Day: Stepin Fetchit on 1st-Class Black People
You can read this quote from Stepin Fetchit, which was said during a New York Times interview, 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…
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Quote of the Day: Arna Bontemps on Time
You can read this quote from Arna Bontemps, which appeared in his book Black Thunder (1936), 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 editor-in-chief of The…
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A Slave’s Exotic Beauty Becomes a Status Symbol in France
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. Presented to the viewer in the magnificent attire of a servant,…
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Quote of the Day: C.L.R. James on Revolution
You can read this quote by C.L.R. James, from a manuscript, “The People of the Gold Coast” (1960), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more about C.L.R. James 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…
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Was Andromeda 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. 68: What was the original…
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Quote of the Day: Louis Armstrong on Folk Music
You can read this quote from Louis Armstrong, which was referenced in his New York Times obituary, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more quotes from Armstrong 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…
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Quote of the Day: Howard Thurman on Doing What You Love
You can read this quote from Howard Thurman, which appeared in Gil Bailie’s Violence Unveiled (1995), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more about Thurman 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 of The Root. Follow him…
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Quote of the Day: Buck O’Neil on Love
You can read this quote by Buck O’Neil, from his book I Was Right on Time (1996), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read an interview with O’Neil 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 of The…