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The New Black Power Couples
Here’s a look at 10 hardworking couples who are thriving in love this Valentine’s Day. She writes the scripts, and he shoots ’em. It’s a solid plan, and the family business is working. Mara Brock Akil and her team have penned high-quality programming about the richness of black female life since the mid-1990s. She’s the…
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The Root Presents manCODE
In our first six years, The Root presented an unparalleled series of successful “Young, Fabulous and Female” networking and educational events for our readers and extended family. And now, in addition to our continued focus on today’s black woman, The Root is highlighting the achievements and the challenges of black men in America with our newest forum: manCODE. Throughout this…
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Great African-American Entrepreneurs Who Made History
Teresa Wiltz is senior staff writer at Stateline, the journalism outlet of the Pew Charitable Trusts. From the very beginning, black Americans have struggled to make a way out of no way. Faced with rampant racism and discrimination, industrious African Americans decided to do for self, launching their own businesses and empires. In honor of…
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Alvin Ailey Opening Night Gala
On Tuesday evening, the Kennedy Center hosted the 30th annual Opening Night Gala benefiting the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The evening is known as one of the most lively philanthropic events in Washington, mixing notable Washingtonians immersed in the arts, philanthropy and politics. As a member of the benefit committee hosting the event, The…
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Our Favorite Black Winter Olympians
Thanks to a deficit of racial diversity on the U.S. team, some jokingly write off the Winter Games as the “white Olympics.” But those observers must be forgetting these competitors of color, who, despite their relatively small numbers, made big impressions. As we count down to the Sochi Olympics’ opening ceremony on Friday, we remember…
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15 Unbreakable Records by Black Athletes
Usually when Chamberlain is on a list like this, it’s for the seemingly untouchable 100-point game in 1962. Though only Kobe Bryant has come close in recent years (81 points in 2006), we can envision a future when some three-point slinging, euro-stepping, baseline-driving wunderkind breaks that record—especially if the NBA keeps passing rules under which a…
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Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s 18 Black History Events You Should Know
Despite the standard Black History Month lessons you may have been taught in school, there’s much more to the story than slavery, civil rights and an ever-growing list of “firsts.” Henry Louis Gates Jr., founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and The Root’s editor-in-chief, who recently…
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Apollo Legacy: The Entertainers Who Danced and Sang Their Way Into History
The legacy of the Apollo Theater stretches much farther than its location on 125th Street in culturally rich Harlem. Since its inception, it has become a must-stop venue for not just New York City tourists, but also for dreamers who hope to make it big in show business. Some of America’s biggest stars (James Brown,…
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10 Powerful Passages From MLK’s ‘Letter’
Martin Luther King Jr. made a conscious decision to get arrested in Birmingham, Ala., on April 12, 1963. After lawmakers issued an injunction against protests in an attempt to quell King’s campaign against segregation, King and his fellow civil rights activists continued to challenge the status quo, knowing that they would end up in jail.…
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Sundance 2014: 16 Black Movies That Matter
Will we see another Fruitvale Station or Beasts of the Southern Wild coming out of the Sundance Film Festival this year? When it comes to the annual showcase for independent films in Park City, Utah—now in its 30th year—all bets are off for predicting which film will generate the most buzz. Of the more than…