Adefunmi I

Overlooked No More: Adefunmi I, Who Introduced African Americans to Yoruba

A pivotal conversation led him on a quest to understand African history and create a one-of-a-kind village for practitioners of the Yoruba religion.
The mobile phone apps for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are shown on a device. The hashtag #keepingitreal is popular on social media, but is has become divorced from its original meaning.
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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.
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.
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.
Still Life with Ham, 1625.

Thanksgiving and the Curse of Ham

19th-century African American writer Charles Chesnutt’s subversive literature.
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.
Dick Gregory

The Legacy of a Civil Rights Icon’s Vegetarian Cookbook

Dick Gregory was an activist, comedian, and trendsetter for Black vegans.
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.
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.
A black father watching his kids play with toys, 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.
Richard Pryor

A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor

Comedian Richard Pryor's performance of Blackness throughout his career.
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.

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.

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.
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.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Great Zimbabwe, circa 1996; photograph by Graham Smith.

Finding My Roots

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.
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?
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.
The International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, on the waterfront.

In Charleston, a Museum Honors a Journey of Grief and Grace

The International African American Museum, in a former slave port, is about more than slavery. It’s about survival and resilience.
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.