
William Monroe Trotter rejected the view that racial equality could come in stages. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — The mustache had to go. A classic nineteenth-century handlebar, it…
William Monroe Trotter rejected the view that racial equality could come in stages. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — The mustache had to go. A classic nineteenth-century handlebar, it…
The president’s tweets are an invitation to a racial conflict that pits citizen against citizen, under the calculation that racism itself is a winning political strategy. By David A. Graham,…
Nation’s Only Black Digital Show Focuses on News & an Analysis of Politics, Sports & Culture. Roland Martin reaches more African Americans each day with news and information using his streaming platform than anyone else in the U.S. Martin, a veteran broadcast journalist who celebrated the one-year-anniversary of #RolandMartinUnfiltered in September, has over 100.7 million views with almost 435 million minutes viewed across YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in that…
By Bob Lord, CounterPunch — Wealth in America has concentrated — and dramatically so — over the past four decades. Since 1980, note wealth researchers Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the top…
By Robert Gudmestad — Millions of people voted in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the…
How disinformation campaigns suppress the Black vote By Errin Haines, CJR — During the Democratic debates on June 27, Senator Kamala Harris had a standout moment. Former vice president Joe Biden, the…
Ta-Nehisi Coates on What Changed in the ‘Obama Decade’ and What Didn’t. Talking reparations, Kaepernick, and the first black president with the writer who may be the definitive chronicler of…
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq. — Whenever Black people bring up the subject of white Americans acting to cure years of discriminatory acts against Black people when our ancestors were forced to work without compensation, they usually pivot to the term “reverse discrimination” or they question whether reparations would be constitutional. My good friend, Gloria Dulan Wilson, responded to the constitutional argument by saying, “It was once constitutional to beat,…
135 years ago today, European leaders sat around a horseshoe-shaped table to set the rules for Africa’s colonization. By Patrick Gathara, Al Jazeera — On the afternoon of Saturday, November 15, 1884, an international conference was opened by the chancellor of the newly-created German Empire at his official residence on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin. Sat around a horseshoe-shaped table in a room overlooking the garden with representatives from every European country,…
By Herb Boyd — An ensemble of luminaries, mainly writers and musicians, shared their memories and reflections of the esteemed author Toni Morrison on Thursday at the Cathedral Church of…
By Shore News Network — “New Jersey Reparations Task Force.” The task force would conduct research and develop proposals and recommendations to address the generational harms caused by the state’s…
This essay is an adaptation of the fourth annual Philip Roth Lecture, delivered at the Newark Public Library on November 4, 2019. The lecture began with an appreciation of Roth’s merging of fiction and history. An admirer of great historical writing, Roth understood that, to be truly great, it had to grapple with what he called, in The Plot Against America, “the relentless unfolding of the unforeseen.” Flipped on its…