Category: Black History

Their ancestors were enslaved by law. Today, they are graduates of the nation’s preeminent historically black law school. | The New York Times Magazine

African American Education, African American History ...

— Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times Magazine In the history of the United States, black Americans were the only group for whom it was ever illegal to learn to read or write. And so when emancipation finally came, schools and colleges were some of the first institutions that the freed people clamored to build. Black […]

View More

For centuries, black music, forged in bondage, has been the sound of complete artistic freedom. No wonder everybody is always stealing it. | The New York Times Magazine

African American History, African American Music ...

I’ve got a friend who’s an incurable Pandora guy, and one Saturday while we were making dinner, he found a station called Yacht Rock. “A tongue-in-cheek name for the breezy sounds of late ’70s/early ’80s soft rock” is Pandora’s definition, accompanied by an exhortation to “put on your Dockers, pull up a deck chair and […]

View More

Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. | The New York Times Magazine

African American History, Black History ...

Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine ARTWORK BY ADAM PENDLETON. Featured Image [dropcap]My[/dropcap] dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that […]

View More