Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment…
I am white, but DNA testing at both 23andMe and Family Tree DNA has turned up a small amount of African ancestry. So…
Most history students never learn that even Martin Luther King Jr.—arguably history’s greatest spokesperson on…

Someone got the bright idea in 1981 to create an entire channel devoted to music videos and called it Music…
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in…
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment…
For nearly all of her life, Kathleen Carpenter had thought of herself as white, specifically, one-quarter German and…

One of the United States' most prolific and beloved authors and poets has died at the age of 86. Maya Angelou was a…
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in…
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment…
I believe I have discovered that I come from free black mulattoes who lived in Tyrrell County, N.C., in the 1700s to…
Theodore R. Johnson is a writer and naval officer who describes himself as an “upper-middle-class black male.” He…
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment…
It's been 60 years since the iconic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared racial segregation in schools…
My great-great-grandmother Leah Ballard Ancrum Williams was born circa 1840 and died in 1917 in Camden, Kershaw…
The ruling now universally known as Brown v. Board of Education was hailed in the black press of the day as the most…
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in…
Editor's note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment…