Category Archives: articles

The groundbreaking business put her in the history books. Here’s what happened next. Madam C.J. Walker looms large among African American pioneers. She was a sharp businesswoman in the late 1800s and early 1900s, becoming the country’s first self-made female millionaire after turning her hair-care company into an empire—employing up to 20,000 sales agents and opening anContinue reading “Black History: Self Made: What Happened to Madam C.J. Walker’s Hair-Care Empire?”

From the first rap single to sell a million to the first scratching on record, Sylvia Robinson created the template for hip-hop’s world domination. Her genius for production built an empire. Her bad… In 1960, a 25-year-old performer-songwriter named Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson — then of the guitar-and-vocal duo Mickey & Sylvia, known for their million-selling “Love Is Strange” — walked intoContinue reading “Black History: The Rise and Fall of Hip-Hop’s First Godmother: Sugar Hill Records’ Sylvia Robinson”

Reginald Edmund Location.Chicago, Il by way of Houston, Texas What motivates you?So it’s my goal to tell the stories of my community. That’s really the basics of it. Tell the stories that need to be told and stir hearts and minds. My hope is that the stories I tell help ignite people’s souls. Company name:Continue reading “Black History: Day 7”

Eyes on You Photography by: Dionne Crichlow If poetry could be called anything other than poetry…..I think of Nelson Wrytings. Here’s why How would you describe your writing style? It is an eclectic blind of experience and a visual understanding of what I comprehend through feelings. The pen takes on a mind of its own.  WhereContinue reading “Black History: Nelson Wrytings”

For enslaved Black Americans living through the Revolutionary War, freedom sometimes meant donning the red coat of the enemy. Such was the case for the Carolina Corps, a military unit comprising roughly 300 fugitives from slavery who took up arms for the British in exchange for emancipation. Created out of two predecessor units in December 1782, when the Patriots’ imminentContinue reading “Black History: These Black Soldiers Fought for the British During the American Revolution in Exchange for Freedom From Slavery”

From YouTube to Twitter to Facebook, if you needed a laugh you’ve seen Ryze Hendricks.

Yolan Young One man shows that you can live your dream even when life says….Not so fast What was your motivation behind your book? Yolan: I always wanted to write a book, but I just never could stick to acertain topic. I had so many concepts in my head, and being apoet, you write on aContinue reading “Black History: Day 5”

An Elite Upbringing The Rollin family was part of Charleston’s elite free Black community. The sisters’ father, William Rollin, was of French and African descent, from a family that had fled the French colony of Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Rollin ran a successful lumber business in Charleston. He employed Irish laborers, many ofContinue reading “Black History: The Remarkable Rollin Sisters”