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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
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.
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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
Sly Stone with daughter Nove, ca. 1980.

On the Sly

A memoir of the Family Stone.
by Carl Wilson via Bookforum on December 4, 2023
Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Chuck D.
partner

Hip-Hop's Black Caribbean Roots

The relationship between the DJ and his MC derived from a Jamaican “toasting” tradition and its related “sound clash” culture.
by Alex La Rotta via Made By History on November 6, 2023
George C. Wolfe.

George C. Wolfe Would Not Be Dismissed

A conversation with the longtime director about “Rustin,” growing up in Kentucky, and putting on a show.
by Vinson Cunningham, George C. Wolfe via The New Yorker on November 5, 2023
Members of the Wu-Tang Clan.

'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)' Turns 30

How the album pays homage to hip-hop's mythical and martial arts origins.
by Marcus Evans via The Conversation on October 31, 2023
Collage of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet, waving, and smoking, and a picture of his home in Queens.

Louis Armstrong Gets the Last Word on Louis Armstrong

For decades, Americans have argued over the icon’s legacy. But his archives show that he had his own plans.
by Ethan Iverson via The Nation on October 30, 2023
Tupac shirtless in the shower, wearing gold chain and covered in soap suds

Why Tupac Never Died

It’s because the rapper’s life and work were a cascade of contradictions that we’re still trying to figure him out today.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on October 23, 2023
Chuck Berry performing with a guitar.

The Transgressor

RJ Smith’s biography of Chuck Berry examines his subject’s instinct for crossing the line musically, racially, and morally.
by RJ Smith via New York Review of Books on September 28, 2023
A photograph of Pharaoh Sanders.

Feel-Ins, Know-Ins, Be-Ins

The most hypnotic piece of music released so far in 2023 was recorded forty-seven years ago in a barely adequate studio in Rockland County, New York.
by Adam Shatz via New York Review of Books on September 19, 2023
Sly Stone performing at a concert.

The Undoing of a Great American Band

Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.
by James Parker via The Atlantic on September 16, 2023
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