When historian historian Quincy Newell was researching 19th-century African American Mormons, one name kept popping up: Jane Manning James. This African American convert, who worked in church founder Joseph Smith’s household and eventually was “sealed” to him as a “servant,” probably still ranks as the most famous black female member of The Church of Jesus…
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Engaging with the stories of the West Indian community forces a realignment of the culture with its past, removing the danger of solely associating the word ‘Windrush’ with ‘scandal’
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Who says you need a cape to be a superhero? Not these good brothers. They don’t have capes or special names, but they are armed with a heart for change. These brothers from across the country are changing their communities one small act of kindness at a time. Read below how a good deed can…
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Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”
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When a man found the almost forgotten portrait of his mother in their family house in Texas, he had no idea just how life-changing his discovery would be. The portrait, Christine, was by one of the most revered African artists of the 20th century, Ben Enwonwu. The captivating sitter was Christine Elizabeth Davis, an American…
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Our education systems tend to provide students with a truncated version of the actual horrors of slavery.
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I remember the first time a friend of mine died by suicide. I was living in Washington, D.C. when I got the phone call from our mutual friend, Preston. The friend we’d just lost was a young Black man brimming with potential. He had a smile that lit up a room and an incomparable sense…
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Elijah E. Cummings, a Democratic congressman from Maryland who gained national attention for his principled stands on politically charged issues in the House, his calming effect on anti-police riots in Baltimore, and his forceful opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump, died early Thursday morning at Gilchrist Hospice Care, a Johns Hopkins affiliate in Baltimore.…
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Eighty years ago this month, the United States competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, with 18 African-American athletes part of the U.S. squad. Track star Jesse Owens, one of the greatest Olympians of all time, won four gold medals. What the 17 other African-American Olympians did in Berlin, though, has largely…
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Throughout my career as a neurosurgeon, I have worked closely with oncologists. Many of my patients have cancer of the brain — one of the deadliest of the near-infinite number of cancers. I have always viewed my oncological colleagues with complicated, contradictory feelings. On the one hand, I’m in awe of their work, which can…
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