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Watch: Al Sharpton on That Time He Was Stabbed During a March
Cheers are in order for the living legend, the Rev. Al Sharpton, as he celebrates 50 years in the civil rights movement. Sharpton is one of the most recognizable activists from the movement and continues to fight the good fight, despite having been stabbed, jailed, indicted and ridiculed throughout his tenure. When Sharpton was 13…
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Watch: Kimberly Hébert Gregory Is Dominating TV
Kimberly Hébert Gregory is having a strong 2017, appearing in five different shows on five major networks. Even though she’s having a breakout year, she’s been acting in TV and film for more than a decade and in plays for even longer. Shonda Rhimes praised her short role in Grey’s Anatomy when she tweeted in…
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Watch: On Chadwick Boseman, Marshall and Tokenism in Hollywood
On Oct. 13, Marshall, which stars the likes of Chadwick Boseman and Sterling K. Brown and is directed by Reginald Hudlin, will be making its debut in theaters. Usually I’d be super pumped at the idea of those names being attached (together) to a huge project like this. But in this case? I’m barely whelmed…
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Watch: Why Colin Kaepernick Took a Knee
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has made waves with his national anthem protest, which he started in August 2016—about a month after police shot and killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and two years after the Black Lives Matter movement gained national attention. To be clear: Kaepernick’s intention was to protest social injustice…
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Watch: Why the Black Kids Still Sit Together
Two decades ago, Beverly Daniel Tatum posed a question to the world in the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? The author, psychologist and president emerita of Spelman College responded to the question while deeply delving into issues of race and racial identity in her 1997 best-selling book. “It’s not…
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Watch: LaVar Ball and the Influence of Black Sports Dads
Whether you like LaVar Ball or hate him, at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding: His son Lonzo Ball can play. It’s refreshing to see a black man speak so fearlessly and confidently about his son’s abilities, but now it’s time to let his son shine. We predict that Lonzo…
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Watch: Bringing John Coltrane Back to North Philadelphia
North Philadelphia is home to a new John Coltrane mural. But this isn’t the first mural of the legendary saxophonist to go up in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of North Philly. The first mural, which sat near Coltrane’s former Strawberry Mansion home, was torn down in 2014 to make way for a new development. “The…
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Watch: How Black Lawmakers Are Resisting Trump
Make no mistake: Many black lawmakers are not here for President Donald Trump. And they weren’t shy about sharing their disdain for 45 at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 47th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. “Every time he soft-pedals the Klan and the Nazis and calls for a Muslim ban and wants to build…
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Watch: Auntie Maxine Says Black Women Can Put Trump Out of Office
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) pulled no punches during her sitdown interview with The Root at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 47th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., when she called out President Donald Trump for being a white supremacist as well as blasting his campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. However, as discouraging as life…
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Watch: Segregated Schools, Then and Now
The Little Rock Nine made history 60 years ago when they became the first black students to enroll in an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark. The black teenagers stood outside Central High School for three weeks, where they faced opposition from an angry mob of protesters, fellow classmates and state officials. In fact,…