African-Americans
Books
The Fearless Invention of One of L.A.’s Greatest Poets
Wanda Coleman’s work tallies and transcends the difficulties of being a black woman in a profession that hardly pays.
Daily Comment
We Are Living in the Age of the Black-Panic Defense
The case of Ahmaud Arbery seems to point to racial presumptions implicit in how we interpret the concept of self-defense.
The Theatre
Lorraine Hansberry’s Roving Global Vision
The playwright died at the age of thirty-four, but she left behind enough genius for lovers of literature to follow like a trail of generous crumbs.
Books
What a White-Supremacist Coup Looks Like
In Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, the victory of racial prejudice over democratic principle and the rule of law was unnervingly complete.
The Theatre
Kathleen Collins’s Otherworldly Women
The writer and filmmaker’s subtle, harrowing unproduced plays deal with doubt, domestic confusion, and the persistent encroachments of color and of the spirit.
Our Columnists
The Black Plague
Public officials lament the way that the coronavirus is engulfing black communities. The question is, what are they prepared to do about it?
Annals of Education
Prep for Prep and the Fault Lines in New York’s Schools
Do programs that help low-income students of color get into selective private schools obscure the system’s deeper inequalities?
Page-Turner
Darryl Pinckney’s Intimate Study of Black History
For decades, Pinckney has shown us what’s invented and what endures.
Dispatch
Donald Trump Makes an Awkward Pitch to Black Voters in Atlanta
More than four hundred people turned out on Friday to hear Trump speak, making up a racially diverse crowd that included many African-Americans.
Page-Turner
What W. E. B. Du Bois Conveyed in His Captivating Infographics
A new book reprints some of the striking photographs and statistical graphics that Du Bois and his curators commissioned for an exhibit at the 1900 World’s Fair.
Cultural Comment
The Smithsonian’s Black-History Museum Will Always Be a Failure and a Success
How black, exactly, can the museum be? And whom is this history for?
Books
Reginald Dwayne Betts’s Poetry After Prison
In “Felon,” his third collection, Betts upsets the narrative of incarceration and redemption.
Letter from Atlanta
Fighting for Abortion Access in the South
A fund in Georgia is responding to restrictive legislation with a familial kind of care.
The Art World
The Amy Sherald Effect
In the painter’s realism, race applies as a condition and a cause for resetting the mainstream of Western art.
A Critic at Large
Roy DeCarava’s Poetics of Blackness
The artist explored the ways in which race can define a person’s style and essence, and made clear how poorly the color black had been used in American photography before he came along.
The Political Scene
Stacey Abrams’s Fight for a Fair Vote
As the 2020 elections approach, Abrams is leading the battle against voter suppression.
Q. & A.
The Reverend Bill Owens Stands Behind Trump
The founder of the nonprofit Coalition of African-American Pastors discusses the charges of racism levelled against the President and his own role in the civil-rights movement.
Q. & A.
The Exemplary Legacy of the Chicago Defender
The renowned black newspaper that championed civil rights and helped spark the Great Migration will no longer publish a print edition.
Culture Desk
“See You Yesterday” and the Perils—and Promise—of Time-Travelling While Black
Time travellers are almost always white men, insulated from a larger racial history, but a new Netflix movie, produced by Spike Lee, takes a different approach.