#black-cultural-icons

#black-cultural-icons

Karen Batchelor's discovery of her eligibility for the Daughters of the American Revolution was surprising, given the organization's long history of racism and elitism.

In 2009, Tina Brown claims the artist has had a series of steamy same sex affairs which her brother, Bobby Brown, Houston's husband, was allegedly aware of. She told the National Enquirer, 'It's no secret. I've seen her with a woman a couple of times. They were walking around without shirts on when I came in the house.'

Exploring Transgender Identity in South Carolina is a candid photographic and interview-based documentation of transgender life in South Carolina. This project offers a contemporary visual record of a community that exists largely outside of that narrative yet within its realities.

Kanya King stated, 'Black music shapes what we listen to, how we speak, how we dress, how we tell our stories and I guess it's defined as Britain's cultural identity but structurally and institutionally is still often treated as m.'

Tonika Lewis Johnson's Folded Map Project connects residents known as 'map twins' who live on the same street name but miles apart, revealing structural inequality and personal commonality.

If you know anything about the basic origins of Black History Month then you know that we weren't given' anything. The question of who owns and authorizes Black History Month holds particular relevance now, in its centennial year, and at a time when efforts to celebrate, preserve, and acknowledge Black people's past in this country are under attack.

Many of these posters are the only surviving proof of certain shows, with no recordings of plays, and certain films, having been lost over time. They offer a history of Black Americans trying to counter harmful stereotypes and provide vital and humanizing contributions to a growing Black culture.

Black History Month is a time to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements and courageous acts of people of African descent in the United States and around the world. This year, Black History month celebrates its 100th anniversary. And yet, Black History Month has failed to fully acknowledge or celebrate the contributions of Black LGBTQ+ people. Just as Pride Month remains overwhelmingly white in its representation, Black History Month continues to be deeply homophobic in its omissions.

Movies led by Black actors are more than just moments on a screen. Seeing the work lives of writer Darius Lovehall and photographer Nina Mosley unfold onscreen only made me feel more represented as a soon-to-be creative. And beyond their day jobs, exploring the vulnerability as the two meet and spark a romance, grow in relationship with their friends, and simply exist and unwind listening to poetry in their neighborhood speakeasy illustrates the overall humanity Black people deserve in and outside of a theater experience.

She remembers walking with her big brothers down a sidewalk fractured by the roots of old oak trees while children played hopscotch on the playground. She remembers going outside and clapping erasers together so that plumes of chalk dust rose above her head. And she remembers being told that she was attending a school that many white parents had taken their children out of just a few years earlier because they didn't want them sitting in class with Negroes.

While taking a break from her musical career, Tifrere founded the nonprofit organisations ArtLeadHER and Art Genesis in 2016. ArtLeadHER provides visual-arts education and exhibition opportunities to women and teenage girls, while Art Genesis helps organise shows for emerging and underrepresented artists.

The park will "honor our greatest Americans, including black icons like Booker T. Washington, Jackie Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Coretta Scott King, Muhammad Ali, and many others," the action reads.

When Norman Sylvester was 12, long before he garnered the nickname "The Boogie Cat" or shared a stage with B.B. King, he boarded a train in Louisiana and headed west, toward the distant city of Portland, Oregon. He'd lived all his life in the rural South, eating wild muscadine grapes from his family's farm, fishing in the bayou and churning butter at the kitchen table to the tune of his grandmother's gospel singing.

From brilliant new voices to seasoned icons, many of the past year's breakout works are by Black authors. In June, Great Black Hope, a coming-of-age story reckoning with privilege and belonging, made first-time author Rob Franklin a household name. And in July, Stephanie Wambugu's gorgeous debut novel Lonely Crowds, which explores the intimacy and frustration in the relationship between two lifelong friends, climbed bestseller lists.

To be Black in the U.S. has such an expansive meaning that traces back to Europeans deciding who got to be "white." While some people, like the Italians and Irish, earned their way into "white-ness," those with even a drop of Black in their heritage were relegated to the lower rungs of the racial ladder.

Walking through Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imaginationat the Museum of Modern Art, I noticed that the exhibition didn't have definite sections or texts, and the wall labels abstained from naming the nationalities of the photographers. It was an invigorating experience to be in a show that eschews geographic boundaries set up by Western nations, as well as rejects a cause-and-effect narrative that centers Western colonialism as a framework for understanding African aesthetic production.

All that matters is what you do in between whether you're prepared to do what it takes to make change. There has to be physical and material sacrifice. When all the dust settles and we're getting ready to play down for the ninth inning, the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet.