African American artists

The first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry and hit Billboard’s country music charts.

Beyoncé is following in the footsteps of many Black musicians before her.

Mario Van Peebles' "Outlaw Posse" is the latest attempt to correct the erasure of people of color from the classic cinema genre.

Before Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” won song of the year at the CMAs, hit maker Ted Jarrett’s music topped the country charts.

Cecil Brown wants to digitally revive the enslaved antebellum poet George Moses Horton. Can digital technology help reconnect us to the tradition he embodied?

The cosmic collision of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.

W.E.B. Du Bois’ message to African American artists.

Considering the suppressed legacy of Claude McKay’s two “lost” novels, “Amiable with Big Teeth” and “Romance in Marseille.”

How the failed search for a silent film uncovered a lost musician of the Harlem Renaissance.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton lived an unapologetic life that transcended genres and gender norms beyond her bluesy hit song and the “Elvis moment.”

A museum dedicated to techno music has opened in Frankfurt, Germany, and many genre pioneers feel that Black and queer artists in Detroit have been overlooked.

Written during World War II, Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos imagined a future liberated from racism and inequality.

What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed reflects on the transformation and growth of Black arts since the 1960s.

“I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty and for Beauty to set the world right,” W.E.B. Du Bois said in his June 1926 lecture.

What did German listeners hear when African American singers performed Schubert or Brahms?

Despite its universalist claims, the field is reckoning with a long legacy of racial exclusion.

Artists, museums and other groups are vying to claim fallen monuments from the Jim Crow era — but for very different reasons.

The career and legacy of a Black critic who argued for the elevation of Black performance.

All along the way, his eye is trained on moments of calm, locating an inherent grace, style, and sublime beauty in the Black everyday.

Colescott satirizes an iconic painting of George Washington, and in doing so, challenges the viewer to reconsider their beliefs about American history.