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A newspaper article from the Inner City Voice in Detroit with the headline, "Black Workers Uprising."

Acid Rhythms

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.
by William Harris via n+1 on April 10, 2024
Performers from "Black America"

Nate Salsbury’s "Black America"

The 1895 show purported to show a genuine Southern Black community and demonstrate Black cultural progress in America, from enslavement to citizenship.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on January 25, 2024
The icons for mobile phone apps Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
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‘Keeping it Real’ Has Lost its True Meaning

How a phrase tied to authenticity and resistance sometimes just dishes out entertainment.
by Megan Ward via Made By History on June 8, 2022
Speakers address a crowd from a truck with a "WDIA March of Dimes" sign.

How Black Radio Changed the Dial

Black-appeal stations were instrumental in propelling R&B into the mainstream while broadcasting news of the ever-growing civil rights movement.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Bala James Baptiste, Tanya Teglo, Richard S. Kahlenberg via JSTOR Daily on May 30, 2022
Colorful graphic showing famous Black Americans

What’s In a Black Name? 400 Years of Context.

From Phillis Wheatley to Lil Uzi Vert, Black names and their evolution tell the story of America.
by Soraya Nadia McDonald via Andscape on March 1, 2022
Zora Neale Hurston browsing books at a book fair, looking at a book called "American Stuff."

The Zora Neale Hurston We Don’t Talk About

In the new nonfiction collection “You Don’t Know Us Negroes,” what emerges is a writer who mastered a Black idiom but seldom championed race pride.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on February 14, 2022
Still Life with Ham, 1625.

Thanksgiving and the Curse of Ham

19th-century African American writer Charles Chesnutt’s subversive literature.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on November 23, 2021
Diagram relating to Black population and diagram of Georgia occupations by race

The Color Line

W.E.B. Du Bois’s exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition offered him a chance to present the dramatic gains made by Black Americans since the end of slavery.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via New York Review of Books on August 5, 2021
Dick Gregory

The Legacy of a Civil Rights Icon’s Vegetarian Cookbook

Dick Gregory was an activist, comedian, and trendsetter for Black vegans.
by Shea Peters via Atlas Obscura on July 21, 2021
Cover of "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s"

In Search of Soul

A musicological conversation about the history and social value of Black music.
by Sasha Frere-Jones, Emily J. Lordi via Bookforum on November 24, 2020
Light reveals the faces three Black people expressing confidence and joy.

Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not.

So many people taught us to be more than the hatred heaped upon us.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on June 15, 2020
A black father watching his child play with blocks, both of them smiling.

A Brief History of Black Names, from Perlie to Latasha

A scholar disproves the long-held assumption that black names are a recent phenomenon.
by Trevon Logan via The Conversation on January 23, 2020
Richard Pryor

A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor

Comedian Richard Pryor's performance of Blackness throughout his career.
by Mark Anthony Neal via NewBlackMan (in Exile) on December 1, 2019
Photo of pop singer Erykah Badu, a black woman wearing a headwrap, singing into microphone.

The Radical History of the Headwrap

Born into slavery, then reclaimed by black women, the headwrap is now a celebrated expression of style and identity.
by Khanya Mtshali via Timeline on May 10, 2018

Straight Razors and Social Justice: The Empowering Evolution of Black Barbershops

Black barbershops are a symbol of community, and they provide a window into our nation's complicated racial dynamics.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford, Quincy Mills via Collectors Weekly on May 30, 2014

Phillis Wheatley: an Eighteenth-Century Genius in Bondage

Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the first ever African-American woman to be published.
by Vincent Carretta via The Public Domain Review on December 2, 2006
Crowded and brightly-lit Beale Street in Memphis.

Memphis: The Roots of Rock in the Land of the Mississippians

Rising on the lands of an ancient agricultural system, Memphis has a long history of negotiating social conflict and change while singing the blues.
by Rob Crossan via JSTOR Daily on October 18, 2024
Buffy of the Fat Boys playing turntables in 1985.

Questlove’s Personal History of Hip-Hop

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, "Hip-Hop Is History" also ends with a sense of hope.
by Bijan Stephen via The Nation on August 27, 2024
Stylized illustration of a jazz trio.

The Barrier-Breaking Ozark Club of Great Falls, Montana

The Black-owned club became a Great Falls hotspot, welcoming all to a music-filled social venue for almost thirty years.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Ken Robison via JSTOR Daily on July 10, 2024
A painting of a crowd of people heading through gates labeled Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.

Fog From Harlem: Recovering a New Negro Renaissance in the American Midwest

How the focus on Harlem obfuscated Black culture in the Midwest.
by Sam Thozer via Journal Of The History Of Ideas on June 19, 2024
Harriet Tubman.

How a Young Harriet Tubman Found Solace in Syncretic Religion

Childhood trauma led Minty Ross (Harriet Tubman) to seek divine intervention.
by Tiya Miles via Literary Hub on June 18, 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
Basketball players taking a knee on the court and wearing "Black Lives Matter" shirts.
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How the NBA Learned to Embrace Activism

A changing NBA fan base drove the league toward an embrace of Black culture, and social justice politics.
by Adam Criblez via Made By History on April 19, 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
Boxes with Black American history inside

The Black Box of Race

In a circumscribed universe, Black Americans have ceaselessly reinvented themselves.
by Henry Louis Gates Jr. via The Atlantic on March 16, 2024
A photograph of George Washington Cable with Mark Twain.

The Dying Pelican

Romanticism, local color, and nostalgic New Orleans.
by Eleanor Stern via 64 Parishes on February 29, 2024
Greenwood District, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Class, Race, and the Formation of Urban Black Communities

A review of three new studies about how race and class intersect.
by Randal Maurice Jelks via The Common Reader on February 21, 2024
Collage of African Americans' faces.

Specters of the Mythic South

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.
by Alena Pirok via Southern Cultures on January 24, 2024
An engraving of Mrs. David Meade Randolph by Charle de Saint-Mémin.

Southern Hospitality? The Abstracted Labor of the Whole Pig Roast

Barbecue is a cornerstone of American cuisine, containing all of the contradictions of the country itself.
by Jessica Carbone via Perspectives on History on January 19, 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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