Ease On Down The Road, Again
As Wicked returns America to the yellow brick road, The Wiz reminds Hollywood what happens when Black artists seize the map—and refuse to ask permission.
The Click of Metal on Concrete
In Black neighborhoods, little girls playing jacks turned sidewalks into studios—where rhythm, finesse, and the rules of belonging were learned one bounce at a time.
Nancy Green, Aunt Jemima, and the American Talent for Neglect
Nancy Green helped turn “Aunt Jemima” into an American icon—then disappeared into an unmarked grave, her life reduced to a smile on a box.
When the Cicadas Came Up Together
In North Carolina, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson recorded old tunes in the open air—where history has always had an echo, and sometimes a chorus.
The Light Over the Table Never Changes. Everything Else Does.
In “The Kitchen Table Series,” Carrie Mae Weems turns one room into a lifetime, and one woman’s interior world into a public record.
Arrival Music
Three cities. Three songs: The quickest way to meet a place is to let its Black musicians introduce it.
Julia: When Prime Time Met Diahann Carroll
“Julia” made history by putting a Black professional woman at the center of a network comedy. It also triggered a fierce debate: was it liberation, or a carefully lit detour ar
Thirty Thousand Feet, and Still Segregated
Ruth Carol Taylor’s six months in the cabin exposed how airlines sold modernity while enforcing an old order—until one nurse from upstate New York insisted on being seen.
The Woman Called Mahogany
In 1975, Diana Ross turned a Hollywood melodrama into a fashion manifesto—one that still teaches America what Black ambition looks like when it refuses to whisper.
She Would Not Flinch
Gloria Richardson Dandridge led a local uprising on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that forced Washington to negotiate—and forced the movement to confront what “nonviolence” coul