the root 100 2017
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The Root 100 Gala Is an Unapologetic Celebration of Black Brilliance, and This Year the Revolution Will Be Televised
The Root 100 celebrates the best, brightest and most brilliant forms of black excellence across every field you can think of: entertainment, activism, the arts, sports, media, politics, business, and science and technology. Every year we put out the list of amazing and influential black people, and every year we celebrate our list with a…
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The Root 100 Is Tonight … and You Aren’t Ready
It’s. About. To. Go. Down. I know this because last night, despite having my dress and accessories planned weeks in advance, I found myself at the Zara store across from The Root’s office holding a pair of red-black-and-green heels. “Woke-ass heels,” as I now call them. So woke, they felt too good to be a…
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Tito Jackson Hopes to Become Boston’s 1st Black Mayor Today
Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson knows polling data isn’t in his favor and that he’s running against a well-established incumbent mayor in Marty Walsh. But Jackson is confident that the pulse on the streets is giving him a more accurate feel of Tuesday’s outcome: That he will be elected Boston’s first black mayor. “The local…
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#FanniesArmy: GirlTrek Organizes Thousands of Women to Walk on Fannie Lou Hamer’s 100th Birthday
GirlTrek, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the health and well-being of black women and girls, is gearing up to celebrate the life of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer on Friday, the 100th anniversary of Hamer’s birth. “Fannie Lou Hamer died too soon, and we want to celebrate her life in a big way,” GirlTrek…
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Watch: Sterling ‘Bae’ Brown Explains That Viral Thirst Trap Emmy-and-Abs Pic
I thought it couldn’t get any better than Sterling K. Brown winning an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama for This Is Us. But it did! The head makeup artist on This Is Us, Zoe Hay, and head hairstylist Michael Reitz decided to gift the world with a snapshot of Brown proudly holding…
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Jordan Peele is No. 1 on The Root 100, Our Annual List of the Most Influential African Americans
When we launched The Root 100 in 2009, it was the perfect time to celebrate black excellence. The arrival of the country’s first black president was an occasion to champion the achievements of today’s African-Americans heroes—achievements that could exist only in our ancestors’ wildest dreams. But this year, in a political and cultural climate that…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Beyoncé Will Forever Be Bey-ond. She’s So Fly, They Named a Fly After Her
What can be said about Queen Bey that hasn’t already been said, done, sung, texted, tweeted, explicated, unpacked, imagined? In an age when there are very few true superstars, she stands alone; one of a few black women, one of a few of her generation. Who else but a few aging rock stars is able…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Shonda Rhimes Changes the Face of Television Forever
The pop-cultural impact of Shonda Rhimes cannot be overstated, although at this point, it’s hard to imagine TV without her forceful, casually diverse, complicated and occasionally ruthless characters who fall outside of what was heretofore the “norm” (read: white, heterosexual male protagonists and their stories). In fact, one could argue that the writer, producer and…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Ben Jealous, a Supreme Builder of Bridges Over Left and Right
Benjamin Todd Jealous first made a national name for himself in 2008 when, at age 35, he became the youngest leader of one of America’s oldest and most esteemed civil rights bodies, the NAACP. Before Jealous began his five-year tenure of the then-99-year-old organization, it was clear that the NAACP had calcified into a shell…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Melissa Harris-Perry Lets the World Know She Is Not Your Mammy
The indomitable Melissa Harris-Perry, once the voice of the weekends through her two-hour show on MSNBC—at once ritual before brunch or church or work and a much-needed respite from the unceasing whiteness of political punditry—gave us #Nerdland, that delicious slice of TV that wasn’t white-centered, wasn’t male-centered and was here for all the blerds who…