Among the signature images of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend was the contrasting tableaus of Black people grouping in front of television screens applauding while white people watching it were shaking their heads — appalled, perplexed and even disgusted by a verdict that flew in the face of […]
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As Clayton Lockett lay on an execution table in Oklahoma in 2014 awaiting his death, medical officials struggled to gain access to a vein to administer a lethal injection. They inserted needles in his arms, his neck, his chest and eventually his groin, where they mistakenly struck an artery. The prison warden later described it […]
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In the 1970s, leaders at the Japanese American Citizens League, one of the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organizations, felt the prospect of reparations for their wartime incarceration was out of reach. Many Americans knew little about how the government had imprisoned more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were […]
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When the Masters Tournament commenced on Thursday, featuring 89 competitors, there was exactly one Black golfer in the field: the one we all know, Tiger Woods. Beyond that, the field for the 88th Masters didn’t look all that different from the previous 87. This is not what Charles Sifford envisioned when he and Stanley Mosk, […]
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One of the strangest quotes I can remember associated with O.J. Simpson came from the broadcaster Al Michaels during the notorious freeway chase in 1994. Michaels, a sports commentator now covering the flight from the law of one of America’s biggest celebrities, said that he had spoken with his friend Simpson on the phone earlier. […]
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In a high school lobby in New Jersey, the principal saw a student heading toward a stairway and moved to cut her off. There was physical contact between them, though no blows. The interaction lasted less than a minute. The student filed an affirmative action complaint against the principal, saying that he had grabbed her […]
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When the playwright Suzan- Lori Parks was in high school,a teacher asked what she wanted to be as an adult. Parks already knew. She had been sitting under the family piano writing songs and plays since elementary school. “I was like, ‘I wanna be a writer,’” she recalled. The teacher’s response was not encouraging. “It […]
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Cornel West, a long-shot independent presidential candidate, named Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter activist, as his running mate on Wednesday, cementing a novel ticket featuring two Black Ph.D.s whom he positioned as offering a stronger commitment to racial justice than both major parties. Ms. Abdullah, 51, is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los […]
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Hank Aaron, the celebrated baseball player who faced down racism as he broke the Major League Baseball record for most career home runs, was honored on Monday with a United States Postal Service Forever stamp and a statue at Baseball’s Hall of Fame. The commemorations marked the 50th anniversary of Aaron’s 715th home run in […]
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A group of economists recently performed an experiment on around 100 of the largest companies in the country, applying for jobs using made-up résumés with equivalent qualifications but different personal characteristics. They changed applicants’ names to suggest that they were white or Black, and male or female — Latisha or Amy, Lamar or Adam. On […]
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New York City has never been immune to heated education fights, but in recent months they have taken on a new level of vitriol and aggression, and expanded to a broader menu of divisive issues. The battles reflect the nation’s growing political divide even in this deep blue city, as parents layer old debates — […]
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Beyoncé released a genre-bending country album, “Cowboy Carter,” last week. After listening to it in all the requisite settings — on a walk, in a car and on a plane — I finally understand what Beyoncé, a notoriously enigmatic pop star, wants to say to the world. She wants to be more than popular. She […]
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Maryse Condé, a writer from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe whose explorations of race, gender and colonialism across the Francophone world made her a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature, died on Tuesday in Apt, a town in southern France. She was 90. Her death, at a hospital, was confirmed by her […]
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One way to view the meteoric growth of women’s college basketball is through the career arc of its current protagonist: Caitlin Clark, the University of Iowa’s stone-cold mad bomber. Her first college game came in an eerily quiet setting: no fans, players spaced out on bleachers and some wearing masks to protect against the coronavirus. […]
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Daniel A. Moore Sr., who created a pioneering African American history museum in Atlanta when such initiatives were rare, died on March 4 in Decatur, Ga. He was 88. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Dan Moore Jr. Mr. Moore started his eclectic collection of artifacts in 1978 and in 1984 […]
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