If you missed the debut of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show this weekend, the network makes most of the episode available online. In her inaugural episode, Harris-Perry covers Mitt Romney and campaign psychology for candidates—including “Daddy Issues”, the GOP progress with Southern voters, union memberships and the middle class, women on
Ralph Ellison has often been cited by literary scholars as one of the 20th century’s most tragic examples of writer’s block: after the immense success of 1952’s Invisible Man, the author lived for more than 40 years without ever publishing a second novel. Yet, in Ralph Ellison In Progress: From
While we typically associate slavery in America with the plantation economies of cotton, sugar, and tobacco, by the middle of the 19th century, Southern railroad companies were actually some of the region’s largest slaveholders. Indeed, men like Samuel Ballton, a slave born in Virginia in 1838, spent years of their
Come Friday night, most college students put down their books and put on their favorite jeans before heading out to parties where hip-hop music blares in crowded clubs and living rooms—Kanye or Lil Wayne’s rhymes making it necessary to shout in order to be heard. The next day, the more
Sarah Underwood— “Integration was one of the worst things to happen to black kids. We lost our community,” said a former student whose segregated Floridian high school closed in 1969. It’s nearly impossible to read that without feeling troubled. Weren’t black communities oppressed during Jim Crow? How could anyone feel
Although Pearl Primus was born in Trinidad and grew up in New York City, she identified strongly with her African heritage from a young age. When, in 1948, she was awarded a fellowship to pay for a trip, she wrote, “My soul hopped out of my body, swung on the
Peculiarly, the story of Bill Traylor is both intensely local and transnational. Born into slavery in 1854, Traylor spent most of his life in the nearly unknown town of Benton, Alabama, just outside of Montgomery. As a self-taught artist, he moved to the state capital in 1935 when he was
Every February in the United States is celebrated by honoring the past and current achievements of the African Diaspora and the history of African Americans in the shaping of a nation. Following her New York Times Book of the Year, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and
Following the announcement of her new MSNBC show, starting in February, Melissa Harris-Perry appeared on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report this Monday to discuss her book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, addressing the four common stereotyped characters that shape African American women’s identities and how they affect
Melissa Harris-Perry must be busy. A professor of political science at Tulane University, a columnist for The Nation, and frequent guest and host on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, she has spent the last few months giving interviews—on everything from her take on the new movie The Help to her politics—in