Category: KOLUMN Magazine

Keisha Lance Bottoms says Governor Kemp did not consult with her about his decision to reopen these businesses in the wake of a coronavirus crisis. In the wake of Georgia’s governor announcing that in the midst of a deadly coronavirus pandemic, he is reopening businesses such as beauty shops and barbershops, elected officials are sounding off. One of them, Atlanta Mayor […]

By Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian Our writers help you explore the work of great musicians. Next up: the deft genius who raged searingly at injustice The album to start with Nina Simone in Concert (1964)Nina Simone is in the unusual position of being a towering genius who never recorded an undeniable, canonical masterpiece. If you choose […]

By Michael Cavna , The Washington Post If there has been one constant in more than a century of America’s daily black-and-white comics pages, it’s that almost all the people applying the artful black inks have been white. Good luck finding women of color. (The Washington Post’s cartoon pages, for example, have zero.) This year already […]

The made-for-television film set a new milestone on the premium cable network. Lifetime’s The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel has made history. The Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, and Queen Latifah co-produced biopic, based on the life of the legendary vocal group, has become the highest-rated original movie broadcasted on the network within the last 4 […]

When he died in 1979, Charles White had been influential, both in and outside of the art world. Now, a coming show at MoMA resurrects the American master. AT THE TIME of his death in 1979, Charles White was the most famous black artist in the country. As the painter Benny Andrews said in Whiteʼs obituary in […]

Before you criticize Trump’s new press secretary for rooting against everything black, you must acknowledge that everyone hates something. For me, it’s balled up tissue. After every church service, when I arrived home, my grandmother would make me dump out the discarded Kleenexes from her pocketbook (which is different than a “purse”—you have to be […]

Black Enterprise Founder and Publisher Earl G. Graves, Sr., the quintessential entrepreneur who created a vehicle of information and advocacy that has inspired four generations of African Americans to build wealth through entrepreneurship, career advancement and money management, has died. According to his son, Black Enterprise CEO Earl “Butch” Graves Jr., he passed away quietly […]

In Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY there stands a statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims. Sims was known as a pioneer in surgery and often referred to as, “the father of modern-day gynecology.” Less known is that he developed his expertise by experimenting on slaves; three in particular named Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey. The statue […]

On April 6, 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at an Easter rally in Montgomery, Alabama. Standing on the marked spot on the Capitol steps where Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as president of the Confederacy in 1861, Dr. King decried the wrongful conviction of a local black teenager who had been executed […]