For nearly three decades, educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, often called the “First Lady of the Struggle,” forged an unlikely friendship with another first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. Bethune became a trusted advisor to both Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin Delano ...
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Friday, January 29, 2021
9 Key Figures of the Harlem Renaissance
As the Great Migration of African Americans made its way north, New York City’s Harlem neighborhood became a vibrant hotspot for musicians, writers, entertainers and thinkers. The collection of talent, all within a few city blocks, became known as the Harlem Renaissance. Lasting between the 1910s ...
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Wednesday, January 27, 2021
How Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi Created the Black Lives Matter Movement
On July 13, 2013, a jury in Sanford, Florida acquitted George Zimmerman of murder charges after he’d shot a Black teenager named Trayvon Martin as he walked home from a convenience store. His killing and subsequent verdict sparked protests and outrage across the United States. When the verdict ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3oqzqPG
How Mary McLeod Bethune Became a Pioneer in Black Education
One of 17 children born to formerly enslaved people, Mary McLeod Bethune spent the first few years of her life picking cotton as her family worked to buy the land on which they had been enslaved. At age 10, Bethune became the first and only child in her family to go to school, walking ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/2MsxFV8
When obsessive adoration turns into hate: Nick Cohen on the sinister haunting of the famous
ANDREW Farquharson is by any definition an obsessive fan. The unemployed fitness fanatic stalked, phoned and wrote to actress Helena Bonham Carter, and her parents, for five years.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2021
10 Things You May Not Know About Wendy Williams
As host and head diva in charge of a popular daytime talk show, Wendy Williams has rarely been shy about sharing the ups and downs of her personal life with her fans, though she's more tight-lipped about some subjects than others. Here are 10 things you may not know about Williams: She was born ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3t0G3vO
How Lonnie Johnson Invented the Super Soaker
For the past 30 years, kids (and more than a few adults) around the world have busted out their Super Soakers and conquered their neighborhood water gun fights. The high-power water bazooka is an impressive piece of technology in its own right, but its origin and legacy make it a piece of living ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3qQxCBl
How Carter G. Woodson's Life's Work Fueled the Creation of Black History Month
For the last four and a half decades, every February has marked the celebration of Black History Month — an annual observance that recognizes the achievements and contributions of Black Americans. But without historian Carter G. Woodson, who devoted much of his life to shining a light on Black ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3aanZGM
How Lonnie Johnson Invented the Super Soaker
For the past 30 years, kids (and more than a few adults) around the world have busted out their Super Soakers and conquered their neighborhood water gun fights. The high-power water bazooka is an impressive piece of technology in its own right, but its origin and legacy make it a piece of living ...
from Biography https://ift.tt/3a5Wgaj
from Biography https://ift.tt/3a5Wgaj
Monday, January 25, 2021
Daniel Hale Williams Performed the First Successful Open Heart Surgery During an Emergency Procedure
When James Cornish stumbled into the recently established Provident Hospital one summer night in 1893, he probably wasn’t thinking about making history or being part of a seminal moment in both American medical advancement and racial politics. Instead, he was more likely concerned with the ...
from Biography https://ift.tt/3a1qyuJ
from Biography https://ift.tt/3a1qyuJ
Benjamin Banneker Wrote Thomas Jefferson a Letter Challenging the Founding Father's Contradictory Views on Race and Freedom
For all his Enlightenment-influenced ideals, which manifested with the "all men are created equal" assertions of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson harbored complicated views of slavery and the abilities of those forced into lives of backbreaking labor. On one hand, the Founding ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3sYMAXC
Friday, January 22, 2021
Claudette Colvin Refused to Give Up Her Bus Seat Nine Months Before Rosa Parks
In 1955, a Black woman refused to yield her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was removed from the bus and arrested, her ordeal sparking legal action that led to the end of Alabama's segregated bus laws and enabled a widespread civil rights movement to pick up steam. You ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3pbyQGX
Kobe Bryant: The Tragic Death of the Basketball Legend
The helicopter may have crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, California, on Sunday, January 26, 2020, but it was immediately felt around the world. The headline accompanying it was completely surreal: Basketball great Kobe Bryant was dead at the age of 41. The way Bryant mastered the sport, it ...
from Biography https://ift.tt/2Y4NpQD
from Biography https://ift.tt/2Y4NpQD
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
How Salt-N-Pepa Went From College Students to Best-Selling Female Rap Group
When Cheryl James and Sandra Denton met as first-year students at Queensborough Community College, school was the last thing on their minds. “We were big time screw-ups,” James told The Guardian. “We never went to class. We’d just hang around in the lunchroom playing cards, and we formed this ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3o3W803
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
10 Memorable Inauguration Performances
Ceremonies accompanying the quadrennial U.S. presidential inauguration have changed significantly since George Washington delivered a private address to Congress and danced the minuet at his 1789 inauguration, with festivities later stretching across multiple days and expanding to include each ...
from Biography https://ift.tt/3sEfoEG
from Biography https://ift.tt/3sEfoEG
Thursday, January 14, 2021
Shirley Chisholm's Historic Run for President
Robert Gottlieb was standing by the luggage carousel waiting for his baggage to arrive after he landed in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1972 when was met with shock. There was no doubt those were his boxes, but someone had written all over one of them, “Go home n*****.” It was clear what was inside ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/2XFUoPH
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Inside Kamala Harris’ Early Years and Multicultural Upbringing
The daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who moved to the United States to pursue their educational dreams, Kamala Harris’ story is the story of an increasingly multicultural America. Her trailblazing career, which saw her become the first woman, the first Black and the first South ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3ibpmIP
Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin’s Complicated Relationship
Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin were two of the most important writers, thinkers and rebels of the 1950s and ‘60s, and they are now rightly regarded as civil rights icons, the recipients of adulation they rarely received during their own lives. Because history has a way of simplifying ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3qbC7pE
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Inside the Long-Forgotten JFK Inaugural Gala
On the night before John F. Kennedy made history as America’s youngest elected president — as well as its first Catholic one — a star-studded bash, hosted by Frank Sinatra, helped usher in what many hoped would be a new era in American history. But the event also revealed the deep racial divisions ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3oGZDdP
How Beyoncé Made History With Her Coachella Performance
By the spring of 2018, Beyoncé Knowles was no doubt one of the most famous pop culture figures on the planet — a 23-time Grammy-winning artist who had already graced the world’s biggest stages, like the Super Bowl half-time show in 2016. Meanwhile, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival had ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3nFkAo2
Monday, January 11, 2021
The True Story Behind 'One Night in Miami'
The idea of Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Malcolm X sitting around a hotel room in the mid-1960s to discuss matters of religion, politics and race sounds like the basis for a work of fiction, and indeed, it found life in the 2013 stage play One Night in Miami by Kemp Powers, who went ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3i2HggQ
Friday, January 8, 2021
Aretha Franklin: The Powerful Meaning Behind Her Equality Anthem "Respect"
If there’s one thing that Aretha Franklin will always be remembered for, it’s how to spell out respect. When the then-24-year-old released her rendition of “Respect” in April 1967, audiences immediately grasped onto the confidence and independent spirit that the song’s empowering sass elicited. ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/2Xlmn7a
How Wilma Rudolph Overcame Early Health Problems to Launch a Record-Breaking Career
From the time she was born, the odds seemed stacked against Wilma Rudolph. As the 20th of 22 children growing up in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, her family came from modest roots, with her dad working as a porter and her mom as a cleaning person. And then when she was 4 years ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/2MN5r7C
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz Formed an Unbreakable Bond After Their Husbands' Tragic Deaths
After the shocking assassination of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965, his widow, Betty Shabazz, received a telegram from someone long thought to be one of her husband’s rivals — Martin Luther King Jr. While both were outspoken civil rights leaders of their time, their means to achieve the goals ...
from Biography https://ift.tt/2LvhfKQ
from Biography https://ift.tt/2LvhfKQ
How Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman Transformed Their Instant Connection Into A Lasting Love
Hollywood and the country music world came crashing together when Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban fell in love more in the early 2000s — and the romance hasn’t stopped since. Kidman and Urban first met at an event in 2005 and quickly got married the following summer. They’ve since welcomed two ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/38lcn46
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
10 Things You May Not Know About Kamala Harris
When Kamala Harris is inaugurated as vice president of the United States on January 20, she’ll be making history as the first female, first Black and first South Asian to hold the office. “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” the former United States Senator from ...
from Biography https://ift.tt/35gGzeW
from Biography https://ift.tt/35gGzeW
Inside Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s Sweet, Decades-Long Love Story
Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen have something rare in Hollywood: a marriage that has lasted over a quarter of a century. Even though they've been together for so long, they still make sure to gush about one another publicly. “I’m madly in love with Mary Steenburgen,” Danson told Us Weekly in ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3ojfqPZ
Monday, January 4, 2021
10 Things You May Not Know About Joe Biden
First elected to office in 1972, Joe Biden has been in the public eye for nearly half a century. Having served in the United States Senate for 36 years, followed by two terms as vice president under Barack Obama, he’s no stranger to American voters, who elected him as the 46th President of the ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/3pO3hCN
Rod Stewart’s Breakout Hit Was Inspired By His First Time
In 1971, Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" became a breakout hit that turned him into a true rock star. The song is told from the point of view of a teenage boy reflecting on his relationship with a predatory older woman. Though Stewart took some artistic license in the lyrics, inspiration for the tune ...
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from Biography https://ift.tt/2MsrWhP