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Sheet music for W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, 1925, featuring blue and white images of Louis Armstrong.

Imani Perry’s Blue Notes

Her new book tells the story of Black people through an exploration of the color blue.
by Mychal Denzel Smith via The New Republic on February 5, 2025
Author Alexis Pauline Gumbs posing in a field of collard greens.

How Collard Greens Became a Symbol of Resilience and Tradition

While modern women poets have found inspiration, collard references appeared in racist limericks during Jim Crow.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Capital B News on December 23, 2024
A newspaper article from the Inner City Voice in Detroit with the headline, "Black Workers Uprising."

Acid Rhythms

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.
by William Harris via n+1 on April 10, 2024
Performers from "Black America"

Nate Salsbury’s "Black America"

The 1895 show purported to show a genuine Southern Black community and demonstrate Black cultural progress in America, from enslavement to citizenship.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on January 25, 2024
The icons for mobile phone apps Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
partner

‘Keeping it Real’ Has Lost its True Meaning

How a phrase tied to authenticity and resistance sometimes just dishes out entertainment.
by Megan Ward via Made By History on June 8, 2022
Speakers address a crowd from a truck with a "WDIA March of Dimes" sign.

How Black Radio Changed the Dial

Black-appeal stations were instrumental in propelling R&B into the mainstream while broadcasting news of the ever-growing civil rights movement.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Bala James Baptiste, Tanya Teglo, Richard S. Kahlenberg via JSTOR Daily on May 30, 2022
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.
by Soraya Nadia McDonald via Andscape on March 1, 2022
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.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on February 14, 2022
Still Life with Ham, 1625.

Thanksgiving and the Curse of Ham

19th-century African American writer Charles Chesnutt’s subversive literature.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on November 23, 2021
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.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via New York Review of Books on August 5, 2021
Dick Gregory

The Legacy of a Civil Rights Icon’s Vegetarian Cookbook

Dick Gregory was an activist, comedian, and trendsetter for Black vegans.
by Shea Peters via Atlas Obscura on July 21, 2021
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.
by Sasha Frere-Jones, Emily J. Lordi via Bookforum on November 24, 2020
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.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on June 15, 2020
A black father watching his child play with blocks, 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.
by Trevon Logan via The Conversation on January 23, 2020
Richard Pryor

A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor

Comedian Richard Pryor's performance of Blackness throughout his career.
by Mark Anthony Neal via NewBlackMan (in Exile) on December 1, 2019
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.
by Khanya Mtshali via Timeline on May 10, 2018

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.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford, Quincy Mills via Collectors Weekly on May 30, 2014

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.
by Vincent Carretta via The Public Domain Review on December 2, 2006
Beyonce concert.

Why Beyoncé Is Carving a Route Along the ‘Chitlin' Circuit’

From Jim Crow-era performance to contemporary gospel musicals, entertainers have shaped the Black public sphere.
by Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon via Zócalo Public Square on May 5, 2025
Ella Jenkins at a School Assembly Service performance, c. 1962.

Ella Jenkins and Sonic Civil Rights Pedagogy

She translated Black freedom movements' ideals into forms that children could enjoy and grasp, nurturing their political consciousness through music-making.
by Gayle F. Wald via Black Perspectives on April 25, 2025
Texas Southern University marching band.

The Storied History of HBCU Marching Bands

Marching bands at historically Black colleges and universities can be seen as both celebratory emblems and complicated arbiters of Black American culture.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on April 24, 2025
Anwan “Big G” Glover, musical director of the Go-Go Museum and Cafe, performs at The Kennedy Center on Feb. 14.

Saving the Signature Sound of Washington, DC

A new museum dedicated to Go-Go music comes with a message for both gentrifiers and lawmakers: #Don’tMuteDC.
by Brentin Mock via Bloomberg on March 13, 2025
A young boy stares at the camera while members of the Black Panther Party distribute free clothing to the public.
partner

The Black Panther Party's Under-Appreciated Legacy of Love

The Black Panther Party illustrated how communal love can be a powerful agent for change and empowerment.
by Mickell Carter via Made By History on February 19, 2025
Old photo of Zora Neale Hurston laughing and holding a cigarette.

Go Hard or Go Home

On folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who passed away sixty-five years ago today.
by Huda Hassan via Mother, Loosen My Tongue on January 28, 2025
Burgundy leather book cover with "Published By The Author" written in gold.

Self-Publishing and the Black American Narrative

"Published by the Author" explores the resourcefulness of Black writers of the nineteenth century.
by Tim Brinkhof, Bryan Sinche via JSTOR Daily on December 11, 2024
"I Baptize Thee," 1940 oil on burlap painting of a baptism.

How Memphis Gave Gospel the Holy Ghost

On the evening of October 7, 1952, gospel promoters booked the Spirit of Memphis for a concert in Memphis’s Mason Temple.
by Robert F. Darden via Oxford American on December 10, 2024
Richard Pryor.

Understanding Richard Pryor's Use of the N-Word

Pryor's use of the word represented something valiant.
by Mark Anthony Neal via NewBlackMan (in Exile) on December 1, 2024
Crowded and brightly-lit Beale Street in Memphis.

Memphis: The Roots of Rock in the Land of the Mississippians

Rising on the lands of an ancient agricultural system, Memphis has a long history of negotiating social conflict and change while singing the blues.
by Rob Crossan via JSTOR Daily on October 18, 2024
Buffy of the Fat Boys playing turntables in 1985.

Questlove’s Personal History of Hip-Hop

An elegiac retelling of rap's origins, "Hip-Hop Is History" also ends with a sense of hope.
by Bijan Stephen via The Nation on August 27, 2024
Stylized illustration of a jazz trio.

The Barrier-Breaking Ozark Club of Great Falls, Montana

The Black-owned club became a Great Falls hotspot, welcoming all to a music-filled social venue for almost thirty years.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Ken Robison via JSTOR Daily on July 10, 2024
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