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African American culture

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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
original

Remembering Slavery

At museums and historic sites throughout the American South, a fuller and more complex picture of slavery is finally taking shape.
by Ed Ayers on January 8, 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
Watch meeting on New Year's Eve in Grafton, Virginia.

Countdown to Freedom

The significance of New Year’s Eve ‘watch night’ services for Black Americans.
by Chandelis Duster via CNN on December 31, 2023
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
A drawing of a family tree of white rappers connecting Eminem and Macklemore.

A Brief Cultural History of the White Rapper

Why do they exist? Where did they come from? Can they be defended? The most pressing questions, answered.
by Alex Skopic via Current Affairs on November 29, 2023
Illustration by Yannick Lowery. A drawing of watermelons between hills and valleys

Tell Me Why the Watermelon Grows

Throughout its botanical, cultural, and social history, the watermelon has been a vehicle for our ideas about community, survival, and what we owe the future.
by Jori Lewis via Switchyard Magazine on November 25, 2023
The Three Strikes You’re Out fishing crew : several older Black man posing and smiling around a large fish.

Fish Hacks

Often dismissed as a “trash fish,” the porgy is an anchor of Black maritime culture.
by Jayson Maurice Porter via Distillations on November 17, 2023
The Fisk Jubilee Singers.

How the Negro Spiritual Changed American Popular Music—And America Itself

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Puff Daddy performs at his annual White Party.

Hip-Hop’s Midlife Slump

It’s been 25 years since Puff Daddy went to the Hamptons. What’s changed?
by Xochitl Gonzalez via The Atlantic on July 3, 2023
The New York Renaissance basketball team.

The Harlem Hoopsters of the Renaissance

The New York Renaissance, also known as the Harlem Renaissance, was the first Black-owned, all-black, fully-professional basketball team established in 1923.
by Frank Drouzas via The Weekly Challenger on June 26, 2023
1903 postcard depicts two Black actors, one of whom is dressed in drag, performing a cakewalk in Paris.

The First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen Was a Formerly Enslaved Man

In the late 19th century, William Dorsey Swann's private balls attracted unwelcome attention from authorities and the press.
by Cari Shane via Smithsonian on June 9, 2023
Miles Davis, Howard McGhee, and unknown pianist. NYC, September 1947.

On Menand’s "The Free World" and Dinerstein’s "The Origins of Cool in Postwar America"

Two differing explorations of post-WWII culture, politics, and ideals.
by Michael J. Kramer via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on May 21, 2023
Ronald Squire, Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge.

Against Race Essentialism

Black identity is a reality, not an idea.
by Tomiwa Owolade via New Statesman on May 15, 2023
Walter Barnes and His Royal Creolians, a popular jazz orchestra from Chicago.

Rhythm Night Club Fire: Tragedy Devastated Young Black Natchez

In April 1940, Walter Barnes and His Royal Creolians continued to play to calm the crowd as the Natchez Rhythm Night Club burned.
by Karen L. Cox via Mississippi Free Press on April 21, 2023
Native American and Black girls tossing around a medicine ball in a circle.

Right Living, Right Acting, and Right Thinking

How Black women used exercise to achieve civic goals in the late nineteenth century.
by Ava Purkiss via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 17, 2023
Sha-Rock tells her story to a crowd at the Bronx Music Heritage Center, 2023.

"You Gotta Fight and Fight and Fight for Your Legacy"

Sha-Rock claims her place as the first female MC in hip-hop history.
by Sidney Madden, Rodney Carmichael, Mano Sundaresan via NPR on March 23, 2023
From left to right, Langston Hughes with Charles S. Johnson; E. Franklin Frazier; Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney.

Why Harlem? Considering the Site of “Civil Rights by Copyright,” 100 Years Later

The confluence of Black modernity, self-determinism, and belongingness of Harlem's housing.
by Bo McMillan via Literary Hub on February 13, 2023
A Coal miner, his wife and two of their children in Bertha Hill, West Virginia, September 1938.

How Black Folks Have Built Resilient Spaces for Themselves in US Mountains

Did you know that there was a hidden utopia of formerly enslaved people located in the mountains of Appalachia?
by Cameron Oglesby via Earth In Color on February 1, 2023
Graphic novel page depicting Harlem's Black nightlife.

A Graphic Novel Rediscovers Harlem’s Glamorous Female Mob Boss

Stephanie St. Clair, who gained notoriety as a criminal entrepreneur and a fashion icon, was a powerful Black woman able to wrest control in a world run by men.
by Françoise Mouly, Genevieve Bormes, Elizabeth Colomba via The New Yorker on January 4, 2023
Image of four people with only their pants and shoes visible. The third person is holding a boombox.

On Atlanta’s Essential Role in the Making of American Hip-Hop

How the city's urban and suburban landscape shaped its alternating history of oppression and opportunity.
by Joe Coscarelli via Literary Hub on November 7, 2022
Pubs and Bars having colorful lights and decorations in the French Quarter

Sex, Race, and Gender in Bounce Music Culture

Bounce is defined by its “up-tempo, call-and-response, heavy base, ass-shaking music” and by its transgressively liberatory power.
by Hettie Williams via Black Perspectives on October 25, 2022
Black and white photo of Camp Washington Carver, opened in 1942, with a crowd of Black children standing outside the front with an American flag in the forefront.

The Forgotten History of the US's African American Coal Towns

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.
by Stephen Starr via BBC News on October 24, 2022
Map of Moreno Valley.

The Blackest City

Not just in Riverside, but in all of the Inland Empire!
by Candice Mays via Mapping Black California on October 18, 2022
Map of the United States South from 1857

Imani Perry’s Capacious History of the South

Contrary to popular belief, the South has always been the key to defining the promise and limits of American democracy.
by Robert Greene II via The Nation on September 17, 2022
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