History
History
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The Real Watchmen: 100 Years Ago, a Race Riot Created Chicagoâs Black Street Gangs
On Sunday, the highly-anticipated HBO series Watchmen set the internet ablaze with Americaâs shocked reactions to a little-known incident frequently called the Tulsa Race Riots. The bombing of Black Wall Street is common knowledge to a large percentage of black folks (weâve written about it at least 20 times, including here, here and here), but…
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Nearly 100 Years Later, Tulsa Begins Search for Mass Graves From 1921 Black Wall Street Massacre
A few blocks away from Tulsaâs Greenwood neighborhood sits the cityâs oldest existing cemetery, Oaklawn. On Monday, scientists and forensic anthropologists scoured the cemetery with ground-penetrating radar, looking for signs of a mass grave that could hold the remains of hundreds of black residents killed during the 1921 Tulsa massacre. As the 100-year anniversary of…
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Hollywood Once Told Francis Ford Coppola The Cotton Club Had 'Too Many Black Stories'. Now, He's Restoring Them
You know how kids have a list of things they want to be when they grow up and toggle between them until they actually do grow up and (maybe) decide on one thing? Well, for me, one of those things was a tap dancer. Now, this urge was completely inside of my head, as I…
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Exclusive: Martin Luther King Jr. Talks Reparations, White Economic Anxiety and Guaranteed Income in Previously Unheard Speech
A newly uncovered speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in 1967 sounds curiously like the civil rights icon is speaking about current-day conditions as he preaches about underfunded schools, the wage gap, white backlash against black progress and the countryâs need to address poverty. On July 30, 1967, less than a year before…
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Breaking: Something Bad Is Happening in Virginia [Updated]
To commemorate the quadricentennial anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in America, we imagined what it would be like to cover that late August day when the first slave ship landed on the shores of the place now known as Hampton, Va. 8/20/1619 2:27 P.M. Earlier: A few hours ago, The Root received several…
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Nothing but the Truth: A Q&A With Bryan Stevenson, Subject of HBOâs True Justice
Montgomery, Alabama, exists as a paradox. It is here that slavers sold other human beings at market, and where a young Rosa Parks set off a campaign that eventually desegregated a nation. In Montgomery, in the shadow of the state capitol building, there is a haggard monument to Robert E. Lee sitting directly across the…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates Clapped Back at Mitch McConnell for Saying âNo One Aliveâ Is Liable for Reparations. So We Came Up With a List
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committeeâs Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing about H.R. 40, a proposal from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) that would authorize a national apology and study reparations for slavery and racial discrimination against black people in America. Among those testifying before the subcommittee was…
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The 10 Biggest Cultural Thefts in Black History
Netflixâs new documentary, The Lionâs Share, chronicles the history of the song âThe Lion Sleeps Tonight,â how it became a worldwide hit andâmost importantlyâhow media companies including Disney, kept the songâs original creator, South African musician Solomon Linda, from receiving any of the profits. While discussing the film, someone on The Rootâs staff pondered ifâconsidering…
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Newly Discovered Photo of Harriet Tubman Now on Display at National Museum of African American History and Culture
A newly discovered photo of Harriet Tubman is now on display for the first time at the Smithsonianâs National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The portrait offers a rare glimpse of Tubman, casually posed in a chair wearing what is described as an elegant dress that features an elaborate bodice…
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Preserving Evidence of the Nationâs Slave-Holding Past Can Sometimes Prove Difficult as the US Commemorates 400th Anniversary of the 1st Enslaved Africans at Jamestown, Va.
As the country this year commemorates the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans being brought to what was then the outpost of Jamestown in the colony of Virginia, history buffs and historians alike say physical evidence of the brutal trade that built this nation and of the people who fought to end it is…