San Francisco's Black Exodus. Since the last report in 1990, San Francisco’s Black population has dropped by 40 percent, faster than any other major city in the country. In an effort to reverse the loss, Mayor Gavin Newsom started the African American Out-Migration Task force in 2007. [more inside]
posted by lunit on Aug 13, 2009 - 27 comments

Behind them on the stage, a giant watermelon. In their hands, little tiny guitars, which they play like mosquitoes on speed. They scat, they dance, they get halfway through the alphabet. Their percussionist has the coolest little drum kit ever, but that doesn't stop him from playing the stage floor and the walls. Who are they? Why, The Five Racketeers, of course! And who's that lady who storms the stage for a little shimmy at the end of the clip? Well, that's Eunice Wilson, and she stuck around to do another number with the fellows. You want more, right? OK! Then let's head down to the All-Colored Vaudeville Show, for some serious oooold-school entertainment.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Jun 16, 2009 - 21 comments

Blackbird. Are you reading this page on Firefox, Opera, or IE? More importantly, are you black? Then you might want to check out Blackbird: "a web browser designed for the African-American community."
posted by zardoz on Dec 8, 2008 - 84 comments

389 years ago...
posted by desjardins on Nov 7, 2008 - 53 comments

Being Black in Utah. The Washington Post chronicles some amusing stories (and some not) of racial interactions in the Beehive State. Yet despite their small numbers black people have been in Utah from the beginning.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on May 31, 2008 - 28 comments

African-American Snapshots & Portraits (page is slow to load) (previously) (via).
posted by JPowers on Feb 4, 2008 - 6 comments

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party's Minister of Culture from 1967 to 1979. Douglas is still alive and making posters for the cause, in this case the San Francisco 8, who were arrested earlier this year for the murder of a police officer in 1971 -- despite the fact that evidence was thrown out of federal court in 1976 because "officers stripped the men, blindfolded them, beat them and covered them in blankets soaked in boiling water," and "used electric prods on their genitals." The SF Weekly published a detailed 5-page story about the case in November 2006.
posted by mediareport on Dec 14, 2007 - 19 comments

rsspect and AfroSpear -- both bringing more Black voices of the blogosphere to our attention. Rsspect is a growing collection of feeds, and AfroSpear a group blog. The loss of Steve Gilliard of the NewsBlog this week has caused many to rightly question why more minority voices aren't as visible or prominent online.
posted by amberglow on Jun 3, 2007 - 66 comments

Currie Ballard, a historian in Oklahoma, has just made what he calls “the find of a lifetime”—33 cans of motion picture film dating from the 1920s that reveal the daily lives of some remarkably successful black communities.

A Find of a Lifetime
Twelve different short excerpts of the film are linked
posted by y2karl on Sep 16, 2006 - 20 comments

Twilight for Black Farms. An interesting topic at NPR. Photos. Audio. Essay.
posted by dgaicun on Feb 24, 2006 - 6 comments

Constance Baker Motley, civil rights lawyer and federal judge, is dead at age 84. (NYT; bugmenot). She was a brilliant lawyer in the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund when it was led by Thurgood Marshall, winning anti-segregationist legal victories against Alabama Governor George Wallace and many others, and defending the civil rights movement. A New Yorker, she was a state senator and borough president of Manhattan. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and she became the first black woman federal judge in the United States. Speeches, writings and clippings.
posted by By The Grace of God on Sep 29, 2005 - 10 comments

Otis Granville Clark is a wonder. At 102, the former butler of Joan Crawford - who served Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin - still drives, lives on his own and twice a week attends church in his home city of Tulsa, Oklahoma... Today his blue eyes have gone milky but they still sparkle, his wiry frame remains agile, and his most painful memories are still fresh - even after 83 years. Coiled on the edge of an understuffed sofa, Clark leans back and screws his eyes tight to summon up "that day". It remains the most vivid of his life... Historians call the firestorm that convulsed Tulsa from the evening of May 31 into the afternoon of June 1 the single worst event in the history of American race relations. To most Tulsans it is simply "the riot". But the carnage had nothing in common with the mass protests of Chicago, Detroit and Newark in the 1960s or the urban violence that laid siege to Los Angeles in 1992 after the white police officers who assaulted Rodney King were acquitted. The 1921 Tulsa race riot owes its name to an older American tradition, to the days when white mobs, with the consent of local authorities, dared to rid themselves of their black neighbours. The endeavour was an opportunity "to run the Negro out of Tulsa". Burnt Offerings
.See also The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 or the tale of the lost city or another The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. See also Frequently Asked Questions from the Tulsa Reparations Coalition. Previous post by allaboutgeorge re: Tulsa Race Riot Reparations on March 1, 2001 .
posted by y2karl on Feb 22, 2005 - 172 comments

African-American == Black? Several high-school students at a predominantly white (well, predominantly NOT black) Nebraska high school were disciplined for a campaign to get 16-year-old student Trevor Richards awarded the school's annual "Distinguished African-American Student" award. Richards is from South Africa, now lives in America (not sure if he's a citizen, the CNN story isn't clear), but here's the catch: he's white.
posted by Bluecoat93 on Jan 23, 2004 - 111 comments

Welcome to the Relativist Fallacy. Conservative blacks in the United States are objecting to recent comparisons between the gay marriage and the 1960s civil rights movement, which fought segregation against blacks, arguing that sexual orientation is a choice.
posted by the fire you left me on Nov 28, 2003 - 89 comments

This Monopoly parody is causing quite a fuss among "black leaders". Is it a stereotype of the "ghetto life" image the media shows us? Sure. But is this game (and the "ghetto life" image) a stereotype that you connect directly to dark-skinned people, as the clergymen seem to think?
posted by bhayes82 on Oct 9, 2003 - 66 comments

Black sues black for racism. "Dwight Burch, a former [Applebee's] employee, accused his manager at the Jonesboro, Ga., restaurant of repeatedly referring to him as a 'tar baby' and 'Black monkey' during his three months at the restaurant." Here's the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission press release about the lawsuit (settled out of court for $40,000). The EEOC calls the case "rare"; BET says it's "increasingly common". But wait a minute: since black males make it a point to call each other "nigger", how can you tell self-deprecating camaraderie from self-loathing colorism?
posted by 111 on Aug 16, 2003 - 68 comments

How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back As a white guy with a young kid, I worry about how the often gleefully violent, misogynist rap music he may choose to listen to could affect him. Maybe that's a racist thing for a white boy to say, but when a black scholar like John H. McWhorter says it, maybe it's worth considering.
posted by kgasmart on Aug 6, 2003 - 97 comments

June 8: The forgotten holiday of Pinkster. At first celebrated among the Dutch communities of New York and New Jersey, by the 19th century the holiday of Pinkster was heavily African-American, and cross-culturally infused. In Albany, the week-long observance began the seventh Sunday after Easter at Pentecost, corresponding with the Episcopal Whitsunday, by raising a large camp of temporary shelters at "Pinkster Hill." Crowds of blacks and whites would mass, waiting for the appearance of King Charles, "the chief character in a ceremony on a Dutch Holiday in America[...,] an African-born black wearing a British brigadier's jacket of scarlet, a tricornered cocked hat, and yellow buckskins." Successive nights included food, drink, sports and Toto, the Guinea dance, which included the "most lewd and indecent gesticulation, at the crisis of which the parties meet and embrace in a kind of amorous Indian hug, terminating in a sort of masquerade capture, which must cover even a harlot with blushes to describe."
posted by Mo Nickels on Apr 20, 2003 - 4 comments

Senator Blanche K. Bruce was the first black person to serve a full term in the United States Senate (representing Mississippi from 1875 to 1881), and the first person born into slavery to preside over the Senate. The Senate Commission on Art recently unveiled a newly-acquired portrait of this determined leader.
posted by oissubke on Dec 16, 2002 - 17 comments

Is Jesse ever happy? You'd think he'd be happy with the #1 movie in the country for 2 weeks straight being a movie that is cast totally with black people. But nope, he's not. He's upset because there was a goof on Rosa Parks and MLK Jr. Wasn't this just a movie?
posted by the_0ne on Sep 24, 2002 - 83 comments

Berry, Denzel Make Oscars History Denzel Washington is only the second African American male to win an Best Actor Oscar since Sidney Poitier's win for Lilies of the Field in 1963. Halle Berry is the first African American female to win Best Actress ever. Berry's speech was quite good (albeit long) but it leaves me wondering how all those "women who stand behind her[sic], Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox and it's for every nameless faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened" feel about being named inferior. And why didn't the camera flash onto Jada Pinkett-Smith when Berry said that? Now, that would have been a true Oscar moment.
posted by gloege on Mar 25, 2002 - 60 comments

In bigot versus bigot, white racist is winner : "Hey, when you find a black bigot, feel free to censure and ostracize him or her as the circumstance warrants. I don't care. Just don't pretend the transgression is what it is not. Don't claim it represents a significant threat to the quality of life of white Americans at large." (via a2g2)
posted by owillis on Jan 21, 2002 - 41 comments

This would be funnier if it wasn't so close to the truth. And I thought the Onion made up their fake news.
posted by norm on Dec 6, 2000 - 15 comments

Jay Gatsby, closet homeboy.
posted by Optamystic on Aug 14, 2000 - 2 comments