By Shannon Dawson Kwanzaa, an annual celebration of African culture spanning from Dec. 26 to Jan.1, originated in 1966 amid the Black Freedom Movement. The celebration was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, an activist and esteemed professor of Africana studies at California
By Shannon Dawson Kwanzaa, an annual celebration of African culture spanning from Dec. 26 to Jan.1, originated in 1966 amid the Black Freedom Movement. The celebration was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, an activist and esteemed professor of Africana studies at California State University, Long Beach. Rooted in the early harvest festivities of Africa, this
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By Ronda Racha Penrice The job was considered impossible: Clear 17 million pieces of backlogged mail. In a war zone. Maj. Charity Adams knew it was a mission that could not fail, not just for the sake of morale of World War II troops, but also for the reputation of Black people in the eyes of the country’s
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By Cedric Mobley For decades, Black Americans fought in the U.S. military to bring liberty to people around the world, even though those rights were often denied to them at home. Nevertheless, these heroes have sacrificed their safety and devoted their lives to protecting the promise of America— that the country will one day truly facilitate “liberty
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Tuskegee University will honor all 95 past and present Miss Tuskegee campus queens during the university’s 100th anniversary homecoming this week. In honor of Tuskegee’s centennial homecoming celebration, Andscape spoke with several women who have worn the Miss Tuskegee crown. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Born and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, Faye Hall
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By Cedric Mobley For 157 years, Howard University has served as the nexus of intellectual engagement and social advocacy to ensure that all Americans can fully exercise all the rights of citizenship. Even before the end of slavery, the work of Frederick Douglass, who would become a Howard trustee, served as the foundation for universal
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Simon Bouie told his mother and grandmother he wasn’t going to get in trouble back in 1960. Then the Black Benedict College student sat at a whites-only lunch counter in South Carolina and got himself arrested. Finally on Friday, that arrest and the records of six of his friends were erased as a judge signed an order
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By Reuters and Michelle Garcia The U.S. Justice Department has launched a review and evaluation of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said. The massacre started on May 31, 1921, when white attackers killed as many as 300 people, most of them Black, in Tulsa’s prosperous Greenwood neighborhood, which had gained the nickname
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By Aziah Siid What do Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Vice President Kamala Harris have in common? They’re all graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The schools saw a surge in applications from high school seniors after the murder of George Floyd. And along with increasingly being seen by Black
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By Richard Sandomir Gail Lumet Buckley, who rather than follow her mother, Lena Horne, into show business, wrote two multigenerational books about their ambitious Black middle-class family, died on July 18 at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 86. Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and film and television producer, said the cause
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When Tamika Thomas went on a field trip to Cheyney University as an elementary student, she left the campus knowing where she wanted to go for college. Thomas, who graduated from Cheyney in 1994, is currently the university’s psychology professor. “I went into Cheyney’s science building and saw different African American students who were learning
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