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Chronicling “America’s African Instrument”

The banjo's history and its symbolism of community, slavery, resistance, and ultimately America itself.
by Laurent Dubois, Stephanie Kingsley via Perspectives on History on June 19, 2017

The Racist Legacy of NYC’s Anti-Dancing Law

The cabaret law—and its prejudicial history—is one of the city's darkest secrets.
by Eli Kerry, Penn Bullock via Vice on March 8, 2017

Strummin’ on the Old Banjo

How an African instrument got a racist reinvention.
by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on October 4, 2016
Photograph of Redd Velvet (born Crystal Tucker) who started her career as a classically trained singer.

Keeping The Blues Alive

Is blues music a thing of the past? A festival in Memphis featuring musicians of all ages and nationalities shouts an upbeat answer.
by Touré via Smithsonian on August 26, 2016
Booker T. Washington writing at a desk.

Toward a Usable Black History

It will help black Americans to recall that they have a history that transcends victimization and exclusion.
by John McWhorter via City Journal on December 23, 2015
Students and teacher talking about homework at Islamic School in Seattle.
partner

Islam and the U.S.

What does it mean to be Muslim in America? And how has the practice of Islam in the U.S. changed over time?
via BackStory on December 18, 2015
Black and white photo of Ornette Coleman.

Seeing Ornette Coleman

Coleman’s approach to improvisation shook twentieth-century jazz. It was a revolutionary idea that sounded like a folk song.
by Taylor Ho Bynum via The New Yorker on June 12, 2015
Musicians and producers around a soundboard listening to a recording.

How Stax Records Set an Example for America

Nelson “Little D” Ross talks soul and significance with music historian Robert Gordon.
by Robert Gordon, Nelson Ross via The Bitter Southerner on February 11, 2014
Circus Sideshow, by Georges Seurat, 1887–88.

Unforgettable

W.E.B. Du Bois on the beauty of sorrow songs.
via Lapham’s Quarterly on January 1, 1903
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
Marvin Gaye walking on a basketball court, with players and the crowd behind him.

Marvin’s Last Protest

In 1968 Gaye shifted his musical vision to give voice to impoverished Black urban communities and the rising dissent against involvement in the Vietnam War.
by Mark Anthony Neal via Medium on April 1, 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
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
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
DC Map

Fifty Years Of Home Rule In Washington, DC

After Congress robbed Washingtonians of local and federal representation, decades of activism -- slowed by racist opposition -- finally succeeded in 1973.
via The Metropole on December 20, 2023
Shirley Horn in a publicity shot, 1960.

How to Take It Slow

Following the rhythm of Shirley Horn.
by Lauren Du Graf via Oxford American on December 5, 2023
Musical notation and a drawing of a barbed wire fence.

The Musical Legacy of a Mississippi Prison Farm

The new album “Some Mississippi Sunday Morning” collects gospel songs recorded inside a notorious penitentiary.
by Hanif Abdurraqib via The New Yorker on October 2, 2023
An uncredited performer with a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys in Give Me Some Skin (1946).

Jammin’ in the Panoram

During World War II, proto–music videos called “soundies” blared pop patriotism from visual jukeboxes across American bars.
by J. Hoberman via New York Review of Books on September 2, 2023

The Disciplining Power of Disappointment

A new book argues that American politics are defined by unfulfilled desire.
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on August 11, 2023
Collage of poets and words.

Spoken Like a True Poet

In Joshua Bennett’s history of spoken word, poetry is alive and well thanks to a movement that began in living rooms and bars.
by Stephen Kearse via Poetry Foundation on March 27, 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
Black and white photo of Elvis Presley in a recording studio.

Was There Anything Real About Elvis Presley?

Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. His music could have been a window into his inner life, but he didn’t even write his songs.
by Michael T. Bertrand via The Conversation on June 22, 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
Picture of country singer Charley Pride performing with guitar and microphone.

Charley Pride: How the US Country Star Became an Unlikely Hero During the Troubles

Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash cancelled gigs in Belfast during the violent 1970s, but Pride played on.
by Walker Mimms via The Guardian on December 8, 2021
Johnny Cash in front of a microphone.

Johnny Cash Is a Hero to Americans on the Left and Right. But His Music Took a Side.

Listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears again.
by Michael Stewart Foley via Slate on December 7, 2021
Eubie Blake, Flournoy Miller, Noble Sissle, Aubrey Lyles smiling in round photograph.

'Footnotes' Review: Spotlight on ‘Shuffle Along’

When a pair of college friends with a knack for comedy met up with a musical double act, they had the ingredients for a sensation.
by John Check via The Wall Street Journal on May 21, 2021
Black children learning in a classroom

What’s Missing From the Discourse About Anti-Racist Teaching

Black educators have always known that their students are living in an anti-Black world and that their teaching must be set against the order of that world.
by Jarvis R. Givens via The Atlantic on May 21, 2021
Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s Rowdy America

A new biography details the cultural jumble of literature, dirty jokes, and everything in between that went into the making of the foremost self-made American.
by David S. Reynolds, Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on April 29, 2021
Illustration of James McCune Smith, the African Free School #2, and the University of Glasgow

America's First Black Physician Sought to Heal a Nation's Persistent Illness

An activist, writer, doctor and intellectual, James McCune Smith, born enslaved, directed his talents to the eradication of slavery.
by Bryan Greene via Smithsonian on February 26, 2021
Performers in "Black America" posing in their costumes

Black America, 1895

The bizarre and complex history of Black America, a theatrical production which revealed the conflicting possibilities of self-expression in a racist society.
by Dorothy Berry via The Public Domain Review on February 24, 2021
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