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For Black Music Month, we’re looking back 15, 25, 35 and 45 years to take stock of black music’s most memorable and pivotal moments. In part three of our four-part series, we revisit 1977 — the year when funk, hip-hop, reggae and disco emerged as wildly influential genres. Tell us what you loved most about…

For Black Music Month, we’re looking back 15, 25, 35 and 45 years ago to take stock of black music’s most memorable and pivotal moments. In the final part of our four-part series, we revisit 1967, a pivotal 12 months for some of black music’s legends of the ’60s — Aretha, Jimi, James, Marvin and…

“They [police] are just infringing on so many of people’s personal liberties that it’s insane … [One time] I was sitting in my sister’s car without the keys and the police came up and wanted to search the car. And when I asked them why, they were like, ‘This is a high-crime area.’ The thing…

The New York premiere of Ice-T’s documentary, The Art of Rap, brought out MCs from across the generations. From Chuck D and Crazy Legs to Naughty by Nature’s Treach and Wu-Tang’s Raekwon and Fabolous, the stars supported one of their legends. The Root was on the scene to capture a few exclusive comments from the…

The first lady has joined Pinterest, and her first order of business was to create a board dedicated to fathers. Click through for some of the images from that board, and go to her page to read the captions that she personally wrote about each photo.

The New York City Police Department’s “stop and frisk” policy has been the subject of public debate in recent weeks. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has claimed that the practice — in which cops can detain, search and interrogate city residents as a crime-prevention measure – helps keep neighborhoods safe. Others argue that the…

What’s worse than having parents of two different races? A whole lot of things, but you couldn’t tell that to Virginia’s attorney general, who argued (and lost) the point in Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court case that invalidated state laws against miscegenation, saying, “[C]hildren of intermarried parents are referred to not merely as…

Blogger Sherry L. Howard started going to auctions some years ago to find a Loïs Mailou Jones or Palmer Hayden painting at a price she could afford. She hoped that someone somewhere had stashed away artwork by either veteran artist in a basement or attic, and that the works would end up at auction, unwittingly…

Lauren is a former Deputy Editor of The Root. Let’s look back 15, 25, 35 and 45 years to take stock of black music’s most memorable and pivotal moments. In part two of our four-part series, we revisit 1987, a moment in time for some music legends of the ’80s — Whitney, Michael, Janet and…