world

(The Root) — This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Martinican polymath Aimé Césaire. If anyone truly deserves the title of Caribbean Renaissance man, it’s Césaire. Poet, playwright, co-founder of the influential literary movement négritude, politician and mayor of Fort de France, Martinique, for nearly 56 years, Césaire was a prodigious talent…

(The Root) — Cork Street in Mayfair, nestling just behind Savile Row and the sartorial panache of its world-famous bespoke tailors, is without a doubt one of London’s most salubrious streets, internationally renowned for its plethora of opulent, high-end art galleries. Thankfully it now has a most welcome recent addition — one that goes a…

(The Root) — After 30 years of teaching African history, I am still fascinated by the idealism and innocence expressed by those who supported plans to settle African Americans on the African coast in the 1820s. They knew so little about the continent and the people who lived in it. Nearly everyone who supported colonization…

(The Root) — “My father’s family just got our African-Ancestry test back, and on our matrilineal side, we were traced to Angola. I was shocked, because I was under the impression that most slaves from Angola ended up elsewhere in the Americas, not in the United States. I’d like to know the percentage of Angolans that…

(Special to The Root) — When the African Union (known then as the Organization of African Unity) was founded, the leaders of that era understood that the success of their individual countries hinged on the success of the entire continent. Now, as the organization celebrates its 50th anniversary, we understand more than ever the key…

(The Root) — This year, African heads of state are celebrating 50 years of Pan-Africanism through the African Union and its progenitor, the Organization of African Unity. Heads of state are meeting on Saturday at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to celebrate the 54-nation organization, founded on Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist philosophy of collective self-reliance…

(Sahara Reporters) — Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Africa’s most well-known novelist, Chinua Achebe, as a storyteller who earned global celebration, adding, however, that those describing Achebe as “the father of African literature” were ignorant. In a wide-ranging interview with Sahara Reporters, Soyinka paid tribute to the late novelist, who died on March 21,…

(The Root) — Whenever northern Nigeria has been in the news in recent months, the stories are usually about killings and kidnappings by Boko Haram — a radical Islamist insurgency group that has killed some 2,000 people and kidnapped others in the region since its emergence in 2002. The slayings included several people killed during…

(The Root) — The American story has too long been told through a racial lens and always vis-à-vis “whiteness.” This is a dangerous premise — fortifying the principles of white supremacy, entirely incongruent with the nation’s democratic values. In no area is this problem more apparent than the American media — and news reporting in…

(The Root) — Exactly 20 years ago today, Stephen Lawrence woke up like a typical 18-year-old student. Studying technology and physics, he was hoping to go to college later that year to realize his dream of becoming an architect. By the end of the day he was dead, stabbed to death by a gang of…