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A photograph of saxophonist Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964.

Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century African American Expatriates

An exhibition in Seattle spotlights the Black artists and performers who called Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden home between the 1930s and the 1980s.
by Tamara J. Walker via Smithsonian on June 20, 2024
Aaron Douglas, “Still Life,” n.d.

The Harlem Renaissance Was Bigger Than Harlem

How Black artists made modernism their own.
by Susan Tallman via The Atlantic on June 14, 2024
Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter surrounded by African American artists' records.

The Song of the Summer Is Actually the Song of 1982

Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” is one of several recent hits bringing back the genre that never got a name.
by Dan Charnas via Slate on June 4, 2024
A celebration of Linda Martell on the stage of the Country Music Awards.

Who is Linda Martell, the Black Country Musician Beyoncé Spotlights?

The first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry and hit Billboard’s country music charts.
by Jonathan Edwards via Washington Post on March 30, 2024
The album cover of "Cowboy Carter" released by Beyonce in 2024

Cowboy Carter and the Black Roots of Country Music

Beyoncé is following in the footsteps of many Black musicians before her.
by The Birthplace of Country Music Museum via Teen Vogue on March 29, 2024
Mario Van Peebles in Outlaw Posse.

How a Century of Black Westerns Shaped Movie History

Mario Van Peebles' "Outlaw Posse" is the latest attempt to correct the erasure of people of color from the classic cinema genre.
by Chris Klimek via Smithsonian on March 1, 2024
Vinyl disc of "Love, Love, Love" by Ted Jarrett

The Black Songwriter Who Took Nashville by Storm

Before Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” won song of the year at the CMAs, hit maker Ted Jarrett’s music topped the country charts.
by Robert M. Marovich via Zócalo Public Square on January 31, 2024
A computer-drawn image of George Moses Horton.

Stand Up and Spout

Cecil Brown wants to digitally revive the enslaved antebellum poet George Moses Horton. Can digital technology help reconnect us to the tradition he embodied?
by Matt Sandler via The Baffler on January 8, 2024
Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway standing on stage singing to each other.

Radical Light

The cosmic collision of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.
by Ashawnta Jackson via Oxford American on December 5, 2023
Self-Portrait, by Samuel Joseph Brown Jr., a painting of a Black man looking at a portrait of himself.

A Right to Paint Us Whole

W.E.B. Du Bois’ message to African American artists.
by Melvin L. Rogers via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 4, 2023
The covers of "Romance in Marseille" and "Amiable with Big Teeth" by Claude McCay over a blue blackground splattered with paint.

Zeal, Wit, and Fury: The Queer Black Modernism of Claude McKay

Considering the suppressed legacy of Claude McKay’s two “lost” novels, “Amiable with Big Teeth” and “Romance in Marseille.”
by Gary Edward Holcomb via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 11, 2023
Painting by Beauford Delaney featuring white outlines of people in front of a red, yellow, orange, and white patterned background.

In Old Wilmington

How the failed search for a silent film uncovered a lost musician of the Harlem Renaissance.
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Oxford American on September 5, 2023
Willie Mae Thornton

'Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters' Explores the Legacy of the Black Musician Who Made 'Hound Dog' a Hit

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton lived an unapologetic life that transcended genres and gender norms beyond her bluesy hit song and the “Elvis moment.”
by Daja E. Henry, Lynnée Denise via The 19th on June 27, 2023
A techno DJ.

The Battle Over Techno’s Origins

A museum dedicated to techno music has opened in Frankfurt, Germany, and many genre pioneers feel that Black and queer artists in Detroit have been overlooked.
by T. M. Brown via The New Yorker on April 14, 2023
Comic strip: Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos: "Jon Smythe has escaped being lynched by Green Men but is captured by the "Dark Mystery!".

Jay Jackson’s Audacious Comics

Written during World War II, Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos imagined a future liberated from racism and inequality.
by Jeet Heer via The Nation on February 23, 2023
Black writers Askia Toure, Lorenzo Thomas, and Ismael Reed seated at an Umbra meeting.

A New Flame for Black Fire

What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed reflects on the transformation and growth of Black arts since the 1960s.
by Ishmael Reed via New York Review of Books on January 14, 2023
Street Painter among paintings in Rome, Italy

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Aesthetics of Emancipation

“I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty and for Beauty to set the world right,” W.E.B. Du Bois said in his June 1926 lecture.
by Clay Matlin via Black Perspectives on April 21, 2022
Marian Anderson studying a musical score with the pianist Kurt Johnen, Berlin, 1931

Black Voices, German Song

What did German listeners hear when African American singers performed Schubert or Brahms?
by Adam Kirsch via New York Review of Books on January 20, 2022
Clockwise from left: William Dawson, Marian Anderson, William Grant Still, Florence Price. Background features the score of Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Classical Music and the Color Line

Despite its universalist claims, the field is reckoning with a long legacy of racial exclusion.
by Douglas Shadle via Boston Review on December 15, 2021
Last ride: A statue of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is trucked away from Charlottesville, Virginia, in July — and bound for a museum exhibition in Los Angeles in 2022.

The Hot Market for Toppled Confederate Statues

Artists, museums and other groups are vying to claim fallen monuments from the Jim Crow era — but for very different reasons.
by Kriston Capps via CityLab on December 9, 2021
Pages from the Chicago Defender and Metropolitan News, twentieth century.

The World According to Sylvester Russell

The career and legacy of a Black critic who argued for the elevation of Black performance.
by Dorothy Berry via Lapham’s Quarterly on August 30, 2021
Chester Higgins photo of man looking out the window of a cafe on to the early morning street

Chester Higgins’s Life in Pictures

All along the way, his eye is trained on moments of calm, locating an inherent grace, style, and sublime beauty in the Black everyday.
by Jordan Coley via The New Yorker on August 27, 2021
George Washington Carver painted in the role of George Washington crossing the Delaware, surrounded by racist caricaturess of African Americans

Robert Colescott Asks Us to Reimagine Icons of American History

Colescott satirizes an iconic painting of George Washington, and in doing so, challenges the viewer to reconsider their beliefs about American history.
by Sotheby's via YouTube on May 11, 2021
Lawd, Mah Man's Leavin' by Archibald Motley Jr.

How Should We Understand the Shocking Use of Stereotypes in the Work of Black Artists?

It's about the satirical tradition of 'going there.'
by Richard J. Powell via Artnet News on February 16, 2021
Jacob Lawrence.

Jacob Lawrence Went Beyond the Constraints of a Segregated Art World

Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.
by Rachel Himes via Jacobin on February 4, 2021
Duncanson landscape painting

Robert S. Duncanson Charted New Paths for Black Artists in 19th-Century America

Deemed “the greatest landscape painter in the West,” he achieved rare fame in his day.
by Alex Greenberger via Art In America on January 29, 2021
Fugitive slaves riding on horseback.

The Black Collectors Who Championed African-American Art during the U.S. Civil War

Dorsey and Thomas amassed important collections at a time when the future of chattel slavery and Black life hung in the balance of a national quarrel.
by Jordan McDonald via Artsy on August 11, 2020
Gordon Park's photograph of law enforcement officers kicking in a door

When Crime Photography Started to See Color

Six decades ago, Gordon Parks, Life magazine’s first black photographer, revolutionized what a crime photo could look like.
by Bill Shapiro via The Atlantic on June 16, 2020
Collage by Romare Bearden depicting African Americans in an urban setting

The Many Lives of Romare Bearden

An abstract expressionist and master of collage, an intellectual and outspoken activist, Bearden evolved as much as his times did.
by Nell Irvin Painter via The Nation on August 26, 2019

What the Black Dolls Say

These rare survivors of early African-American art can illuminate much about our difficult history.
by Elizabeth Pochoda via The Nation on September 17, 2018
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