Willoughby Avenue - KOLUMN Magazine

Exclusive: Atlanta-Based Entrepreneur Jewel Burks Solomon named Head of Google For Startups, U.S. | Hypepotamus

January 15, 2020January 15, 2020African American Entrepreneurs

Atlanta tech entrepreneur Jewel Burks Solomon has been named head of Google for Startups for the U.S., Hypepotamus has confirmed. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Solomon is not only the first African-American woman to have this title — a highly significant matter in itself — but she is also the first person to ever hold the newly created […]

School district faces $12M lawsuit over ‘racist’ photo of African American students | AJC.com

January 14, 2020January 14, 2020Racism

Parents plan to sue a New York school district for $12 million after one of its teachers allegedly wrote the phrase “Monkey do” above a photograph of four African American students who attended a class trip to the Bronx Zoo in November. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] A science teacher at Longwood High School took the photo of […]

10 James Baldwin Books to Read in Your Lifetime | The Oprah Magazine

January 14, 2020January 27, 2020African American Activist, African American Author ...

More from the literary legend behind If Beale Street Could Talk. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] James Baldwin is an iconic author for our time, a writer who gave the world countless poignant essays, shorts stories, novels, plays, and poems during his 63 years. As a gay Black man coming to terms with his identity in the 1950s, […]

Her Son Was Careful to Avoid Police Officers. Then He Was Killed by One. | The New York Times (2008)

January 14, 2020January 14, 2020Criminal Justice Reform, Police Brutality

He drove the speed limit. He kept his car in good repair. Instead of shorts or T-shirts, he wore Ralph Lauren dress shirts. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] For years before he was fatally shot by a Dallas police officer who says she mistook him for a burglar in his own home, Botham Shem Jean had gone out […]

Matthew Cherry’s ‘Hair Love’ Receives Well Deserved Oscar Nomination | Because of Them We Can

January 14, 2020January 14, 2020African American Cinema, African American Film

Hair Love, the popular children’s book turned animated short by former NFL player, Matthew Cherry, gets nominated for an Oscar, USA Today reports. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] We first wrote about Cherry and his budding animated short in 2017. The NFL player turned filmmaker was on a mission to highlight the relationship between Black fathers and daughters […]

The Story of Senegalese Visionary Mama Casset | The Culture Trip

January 14, 2020January 27, 2020African Art, African Politics

During West Africa’s prolific era of portrait photography in the 1900s, Mama Casset emerged as one of Senegal’s pioneering figures. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] When portrait photography first started to emerge from French West Africa in the early 1900s, it was almost exclusively Europeans who operated the cameras. Native subjects were prized for their exotic settings, unusual […]

Christian Soldiers | Slate

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020African American History, Lynchings ...

The lynching and torture of blacks in the Jim Crow South weren’t just acts of racism. They were religious rituals. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] The cliché is that Americans have a short memory, but since Saturday, a number of us have been arguing over medieval religious wars and whether they have any lessons for today’s violence in […]

Cory Booker Drops Out of 2020 Presidential Race | The New York Times

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020African American Politics, African American Vote

The New Jersey senator, who built his campaign around a message of unity, was unable to catch on with substantial numbers of voters and ended his quest before voting began. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey dropped out of the Democratic presidential race on Monday, ending a nearly yearlong quest built around a […]

Don’t tell me I’m ‘too pretty to be Aboriginal’. It’s not a compliment; it’s racism | The Guardian

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020Colorism

Aboriginal women are all too familiar with this phrase. In her new documentary, Sasha Sarago investigates the racism behind it. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] I was 11 years old when my best friend’s sister approached me at her birthday party. She asked me what my nationality was; when I told her, she replied, “You’re too pretty to […]

Born Into Slavery, This Centenarian Learned to Read at 116, Becoming the Nation’s Oldest Student | Black Enterprise

January 13, 2020June 19, 2020African American History, Black History

Selena Hill, Black Enterprise Despite being born into slavery and enduring over a century of discrimination, Mary Hardway Walker managed to accomplish an extraordinary feat. At 116 years old, she learned to read. Walker was born in Union Springs, Alabama, in 1848 and lived in bondage until she was freed at the age of 15 following […]