African American culture

Did you know that there was a hidden utopia of formerly enslaved people located in the mountains of Appalachia?

Stephanie St. Clair, who gained notoriety as a criminal entrepreneur and a fashion icon, was a powerful Black woman able to wrest control in a world run by men.

How the city's urban and suburban landscape shaped its alternating history of oppression and opportunity.

Bounce is defined by its “up-tempo, call-and-response, heavy base, ass-shaking music” and by its transgressively liberatory power.

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.

Contrary to popular belief, the South has always been the key to defining the promise and limits of American democracy.

“That spirit of community, which we all talk about as the roots of hip-hop, really originates in that block party concept.”

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.

From MLK to Obama, advancers for civil rights were driven by their fatherhood and dreams of better life for their own children.

In 2015, precisely 31 years to the day of her death, blues and cabaret singer Alberta Hunter was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

An interactive visualization of the remarkable diversity of African American music, with essays on the characteristics of each genre and style.

Mary Lumpkin’s life helps us to better understand the post-Civil War push for education.

Rejecting the resignation of the 1970s and ’80s, Robinson found in the disinvested ruins of the city a new egalitarian form of politics.

Something unusual happened in New Orleans music around 1895. Was it the birth of the blues?

Philadelphia gave America its flag, along with other enduring icons of nationhood. But for many, the red, white and blue banner embodies a legacy of injustice.

What a new book and six companion videos have to say about the fate of Black classical music in America.

In the 1960s, a man named Robert E. Simon Jr. dreamed of a city that would be open to all, regardless of race or income-Reston, VA.

On who gets caught in the crosshairs when it comes to “beef."

Digging down into the roots of white America’s infatuation with Black.

The scholar has changed the way Black authors get read and the way Black history gets told.