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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
Black dolls.

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
Still from Black Panther film.

What Would W. E. B. Du Bois Make of 'Black Panther'?

Considering Du Bois' complex ideas on the role of black artists in the struggle against white supremacy.
by Clint Smith via The Paris Review on March 1, 2018

Teen Idol Frankie Lymon's Tragic Rise and Fall Tells the Truth About 1950s America

The mirage of the singer's soaring success echoes the mirage of post-war tranquility at home.
by Jeff MacGregor via Smithsonian on January 4, 2018
Painting of "Big Mama Thornton" wearing a suit and cowboy hat, singing on stage.

The Thinning of Big Mama

"Big Mama" does what all blues greats do: she telegraphs endurance and force to whomever out there in TV land might need it. This is blues perfection.
by Cynthia Shearer via Oxford American on February 15, 2017
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

The Story of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, America's First Black Pop Star

The 19th century singer forced critics and audiences to reconcile their ears with their racism.
by Adam Gustafson via The Conversation on February 7, 2017
Kids and adults free dancing.

Camille A. Brown: A Visual History of Social Dance in 25 Moves

Why do we dance? African-American social dances started as a way for enslaved Africans to keep cultural traditions alive and retain a sense of inner freedom.
by Camille A. Brown via TED on June 1, 2016
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, far left, interviewing Black filmmakers Mario Van Peebles, Neema Barnette, John Singleton, Reginald Hudlin, and Warrington Hudlin (left to right).
partner

Soul of Black Identity: New Jack Cinema

A conversation with some of the hottest filmmakers on the scene: They're young, they're Black, but they're making green.
by MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on August 16, 1991
Alvin Ailey

How to Forget Alvin Ailey

Even as “Edges of Ailey” gathers such intimate documents, it does not make them legible to its visitors.
by Juliana Devaan via Public Books on March 12, 2025
Sheet music for W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, 1925, featuring blue and white images of Louis Armstrong.

Imani Perry’s Blue Notes

Her new book tells the story of Black people through an exploration of the color blue.
by Mychal Denzel Smith via The New Republic on February 5, 2025
Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, and fliers advertising jazz performances.

Jazz Off the Record

In the late 1960s, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, jazz legends were playing the best music you’ve never heard.
by Ethan Iverson via The Nation on January 14, 2025
Exhibit title card featuring a mural of Elizabeth Cotten.

Lady Plays the Blues Project

A digital annotated bibliography and multimedia archive about Black women country blues guitarists.
by Yoli M. Bergstrom-Lynch via Lady Plays the Blues Project on December 31, 2024
"I Baptize Thee," 1940 oil on burlap painting of a baptism.

How Memphis Gave Gospel the Holy Ghost

On the evening of October 7, 1952, gospel promoters booked the Spirit of Memphis for a concert in Memphis’s Mason Temple.
by Robert F. Darden via Oxford American on December 10, 2024
New release of Louis Vasnier recording.

The Earliest Known ‘Country’ Recording Has Been Found. The Singer? A Black Man.

A new release of an 1891 song by Louis Vasnier deepens what we know about the genre’s origins.
by Geoff Edgers via Washington Post on November 30, 2024
Fire (the Magazine) cover with bold words fire in red and other visual illustrations.

A Radical Black Magazine From the Harlem Renaissance Was Ahead of Its Time

Fire!! was a pathbreaking showcase for Black artists and writers “ready to emotionally serve a new day and a new generation.”
by Jon Key via Hammer & Hope on November 19, 2024
Jazz album covers.

How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Carissa Kowalski Dougherty via JSTOR Daily on August 22, 2024
summer campers around a fire
partner

Around the Campfire with Paul Robeson

The history of Camp Wo-Chi-Ca tells a largely overlooked story about left-wing politics and Black culture.
by Nina Silber via HNN on August 6, 2024
Billie Holiday singing in a recording studio.

Decades After Billie Holiday’s Death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is Still a Searing Testament to Injustice

Christian and Jewish themes influenced the world of art around one of jazz’s greatest singers.
by Tracy Fessenden via The Conversation on July 15, 2024
Motown Records advertisement for the Dynamic Superiors.

Trapped in Motown’s Closet

The intersection of Black music and queer identity.
by Mark Anthony Neal via Medium on June 2, 2024
Ella Fitzgerald at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, 1970.

The Genius of Ella Fitzgerald

She remade the American songbook in her image, uprooting the very meaning of musical performance.
by Sam Fentress via The Nation on May 28, 2024
A painting of a lively sermon in a Black church.

Respectability Be Damned: How the Harlem Renaissance Paved the Way for Art by Black Nonbelievers

How James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and others embraced a new Black humanism.
by Anthony B. Pinn via Literary Hub on May 24, 2024
Ella Watson in American Gothic, photographed by Gordon Parks.

She Was No ‘Mammy’

Gordon Parks’s most famous photograph, "American Gothic," was of a cleaning woman in Washington, D.C. She has a story to tell.
by Salamishah Tillet via The Atlantic on May 8, 2024
Nell Irvin Painter.

Nell Irvin Painter’s Chronicles of Freedom

A new career-spanning book offers a portrait of Painter’s career as a historian, essayist, and most recently visual artist.
by Elias Rodriques via The Nation on May 7, 2024
Posters for Beyonce's "Cowboy Carter" album.
partner

History Explains the Backlash to Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter'

Black cowboys made up as much as a quarter of working ranch hands during late 19th century. That legacy has been obscured.
by Elyssa Ford, Rebecca Scofield via Made By History on April 12, 2024
Aaron Douglas, detail from painting Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction, 1934.

The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance

The world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.
by Rachel Himes via The Nation on April 9, 2024
Alice Coltrane

The Visions of Alice Coltrane

In the years after her husband John’s death, the harpist discovered a sound all her own, a jazz rooted in acts of spirit and will.
by Marcus J. Moore via The Nation on March 21, 2024
Maria P. Williams, 1916.

The First Black Woman to Write, Produce, and Act in Her Own Film

Maria P. Williams pioneered filmmaking for African American women, but her life is even more thrilling than her sole film.
by Jennie Knuppel via The Saturday Evening Post on February 29, 2024
Carl Van Vechten's portrait of John A. Williams, 1962.

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

John A. Williams’s unsung novel.
by Gene Seymour via Bookforum on February 6, 2024
Bottom half of a red sheet music cover with the words "Sung by Aida Overton Walker with the Smart Set Co" written on it with a portrait of Aida to the right

Sheet Music Covers for the Gotham-Attucks Company, ca. 1905–1911

Beginning in 1905, one star-studded song-publishing company would push the aesthetic limits of how Black popular music was shown to the public.
by Dorothy Berry via The Public Domain Review on February 1, 2024
Nicki Minaj and the autobiography of Malcolm X written by Alex Haley.

It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop

We cannot understand the last fifty years of U.S. history—certainly not the first thing about Black history—without studying the emergence and evolution of rap.
by Austin McCoy via The Baffler on January 9, 2024
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