Malcolm X
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NYC Student Wants to Put His Namesake Malcolm X’s Name on His Senior Sweater, but His School Thinks It’s Inappropriate
His name is Malcolm Xavier Combs. He was named for the iconic black activist Malcolm X. And yet when Malcolm wanted to put the moniker of his namesake (and thus a shortened form of his own name) on his senior sweater, school officials deemed it inappropriate. “I don’t understand it,” Mychelle Combs, Malcolm’s mother, told…
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Viola Davis Slays Her 2018 Women’s March Speech: ‘Nothing and No One Can Be Great Without a Cost’
She came. She roared. She conquered. Actress Viola Davis, who has been thrilling audiences with her passionate, deeply felt words since at least 2017 (or that year she made us all cry at the Oscars), gave no less at the Women’s March 2018 in Los Angeles this past Saturday. Decked out in a leather…
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Watch: Patrisse Khan-Cullors on Being Under Extreme Surveillance
As an activist, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors says that her home was first raided by Los Angeles police in 2013. “Surveillance tactics have been used against me,” Khan-Cullors told The Root.While this raid was years before the FBI’s 12-page “Black Identity Extremist” report—which vilifies black activists—was leaked, it’s clear that members of the…
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10 Reasons I’m Glad I Was Raised in a Black Household
How you were raised largely dictates how you will turn out as an adult. I have zero science to back this up; nor do I have a link to a white paper from the Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems’ (that was a real thing, by the way) early writings that proves this axiom dating back…
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Photographer Don Hogan Charles, Who Shot Iconic Photo of Malcolm X at His Window, Has Died
The first black staff photographer hired at the New York Times, Don Hogan Charles, the man who shot the iconic photo of Malcolm X at a window with a rifle, has died. Former New York Times staff writer Rachel Swarns tweeted the news Sunday afternoon, prompting many of us to wonder where the Times obituary…
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Black Folks Who, Though Invited, Probably Wouldn’t Come to the Cookout
Ah, #TheCookout. That grand bastion of blackness where nobody ever reneges during spades, and the brown liquor, Popeyes chicken and red Kool-Aid or McDonald’s sweet tea never runs out. The cookout is a mythical place where all are gathered in both Jesus’ (and Allah’s and … well you get the point) and blackness’s names to…
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Spike Lee’s 25 Best Movies, Ranked
The man from New York City’s Brooklyn borough is having a good year. Spike Lee, black America’s most prolific and celebrated filmmaker, turned 60 years old back in March. Then, this past Saturday, he celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of Malcolm X. What’s more, his TV show, She’s Gotta Have It, inspired by…
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Watch: Our World in Malcolm X’s Words
Very seldom does one encounter a leader as valiant, sharp and fearless as Malcolm X (aka el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), born May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Neb., as Malcolm Little. He and his family were terrorized by white supremacists (who would eventually kill his father). During time in jail, Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam and…
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Everything I Know About Black History I Learned in the Middle Room
In 1952 my grandfather built a house for his wife and six children in a small South Carolina town. The house had four bedrooms, one bathroom, a dining room and a living room you could enter only if you were dressed in your Sunday best or entertaining company or if somebody had died. After my…
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Harlem’s Schomburg Center Designated a National Historic Landmark
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture was designated a national historic landmark this week. The site in central Harlem was among 24 places the U.S. Department of the Interior gave the honor to on Wednesday. The 91-year-old research library is named after black Puerto Rican Arturo Schomburg, a leading voice of the Harlem…