history

(The Root) — Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 12: Where was the first black town in what is now the United States? As the nation turns its attention to the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, it’s worth noting that decades before the United States was even formed, African Americans lived free in a…

(The Root) — Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is about a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) who gains his freedom and becomes a bounty hunter with the help of Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). They travel (under a ruse developed by Schultz) to Mississippi to free Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from evil plantation owner Calvin…

(The Root) — Since 1994’s Pulp Fiction, the n-word has been an issue — not so much for Quentin Tarantino but for some of the viewers of his films. Why does he use it so liberally in his movies? Things are no different with his latest film, Django Unchained, opening Christmas Day. In the postmodern,…

(The Root) — If you thought Quentin Tarantino was done with historical revenge fantasies after Inglourious Basterds and his latest, Django Unchained — a “postmodern, slave-narrative Western,” in the words of The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr. — you’d be wrong. The spaghetti Western-inspired Django Unchained, in theaters Dec. 25, depicts the horrors of…

(The Root) — Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 10: Who was the first black person in the U.S. to lead a “back-to-Africa” effort? The person who spearheaded “the first, black initiated ‘back to Africa’ effort in U.S. history,” according to the historian Donald R. Wright, was also the first free African American to visit…

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. (The Root) — Amazing Fact About…

Editor’s Note: This column was first published on Dec. 3, 2012. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 8: What was the first black town in North America? As I mentioned in my column about Juan Garrido, the first documented African to land in what is now the United States, in 1513, as a student I…

(The Root) — Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 7: Which slave literally wrote his way to freedom? From the time when they first landed in Florida in the early 1500s, African Americans did their best to run away from the inhumane conditions of slavery. Over the course of slavery in the United States between…

(The Root) — Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 6: Who was the first black explorer of the North American Southwest? The first enslaved African to arrive in Florida whom we can document by name was a black man named Esteban. And, long before the explorers Lewis and Clark crossed the continent, he would traverse…

(The Root) — Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 5: Who was Africa’s first ambassador to Europe? Most of us assume that the flow of human beings, ideas, trade and information between Europe and Africa was one-way, and that Africans were a “primitive” people outside of time, living in ignorance and isolation until Portuguese navigators…