The Root

The sophomore jinx is real.

While in custody at the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center in Wichita, Kansas, 17-year-old Cedric Lofton’s heart stopped beating while laid on the ground, restrained. He never regained consciousness.Read more...

The fallout for Travis Scott continues following the mass casualty event that took place at his Astroworld festival in Houston on November 5, leaving 10 concertgoers dead. In addition to hundreds of lawsuits filed and multiple cancellations of upcoming performances, several of Scott’s highly anticipated collaborations…Read more...

I can’t lie. When I first heard former President Trump’s claim that dead people were casting ballots in the election, my imagination raced. In my head, Zombies rose out of the grave on Election day; they headed to a ballot place and started pressing buttons. Then, I thought, if this was even remotely true, what…Read more...

My dearest and most patient reader,Read more...

Add Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations to the growing list of Broadway closures.

Who will win the most controversial—read: conservative—seat on The View? That’s the question facing producers of the long-running daytime talk show, which has gone without a right-wing host since the departure of Meghan McCain in August after four tumultuous seasons. “Before taking off for the holidays, the four…Read more...

For some inexplicable reason, in case you thought Omarion Omicron—the Marvel Cinematic Universe variant that has been terrorizing man, woman, and petulant child all winter—was a joke, I’m here to present irrefutable evidence to the contrary.Read more...

One of the most pressing issues that the United States faces in 2022 is voting rights. Republicans have unveiled maps that squarely put elections in their favor in places like Ohio. If that’s not enough, an avalanche of anti-voting rights legislation have hit places like Lincoln County, Georgia. Many have been…Read more...

Warner Bros. gave Bat-fans a special gift with a surprise trailer for The Batman. This is the third trailer for the movie, scheduled to hit theaters March 4, but the first to feature an extended look at Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman.

Every Monday of the fifth and final season of HBO’s cultural flashpoint show, Insecure, Very Smart Brothas Senior Editor Panama Jackson and Contributing Freelance Writer Shanelle Genai have broken down the latest episode. But just like the fan-favorite show, all good things must come to an end. Since Panama recently…Read more...

Of course, the holiday season isn’t devoid of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s usual antics. While millions of Black people around the world began celebrating the weeklong holiday of Kwanzaa on Sunday, Greene used her twitter fingers to do what she does best: talk about things about which she has no clue.

Even with Insecure meeting its emotional end—oh, you really thought Team Lawrence was gonna take the L with a championship on the line?—it’s a pivotal time for Black television. FX’s Atlanta is plotting its comeback, Peacock’s Bel-Air is primed for world domination, and if you’re a sports head, HBO’s Winning Time: The…Read more...

In a year of high-profile exonerations of Black men, another one has occurred.Read more...

What a difference a year makes. Just a few days from now will be a year to the day where hundreds of people who didn’t like an election result went to Washington D.C. and proceeded to storm the Capitol. Investigations of what happened and who was involved in the Jan. 6th attempted insurrection are still ongoing, with…Read more...

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex received a Boxing Day present of vindication from The Mail on Sunday, as the British newspaper was forced to print a front page apology for publishing a private letter between Meghan and her father.

After a long, hard day at the office (or working from home), nothing beats meeting up with your crew for a few drinks at your favorite local wine bar. From the laid-back ambiance and chic décor with the perfect playlist always in rotation to the friendly bartender who knows exactly what to pour based on your energy, a…Read more...

Millennials, rejoice! Diddy, or shall we say, the brother newly known as Love, has bought back his famed Y2K brand, Sean John. That’s right, it’s time to relive the greatest fashion era there ever was, that of the velour tracksuit, duh!Read more...

It looks like funds to Flint, Michigan are ever so slowly making their way to the city’s residents. Last month, a federal judge approved a partial settlement of $626.25 million dollars, an amount some feel is entirely inadequate to make up for the everlasting impact of the water crisis.Read more...

A Google office search for Black women workers is starting to display some slim results. NBC News reports that in 2020, Black + female identifying employees left the company at the second highest rate of any other racial-gender group, following only that of Native + female identifying individuals. California’s civil…Read more...

We don’t know yet how good Herschel Walker is at politics, but candidacy for the U.S. Senate is revealing that he’s pretty good at getting a bag.

Even with all the extra time we’ve been spending at home, there’s no way you watched everything 2021 had to offer. The year was overflowing with quality television. Fortunately, the week between Christmas and New Year’s doesn’t give non-sports fans much to choose from, which means you have plenty of time to catch-up…Read more...

Warning: spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: No Way Home, What If…?, Loki and WandaVision! Seriously, if you’re not 100% caught up on the MCU, stop reading now!

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Let’s play a game of one of these things is not like the other. There were the Portland protests in the summer of 2020 where many people took to the streets in protest of the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others. Then earlier this year there was the January 6th insurrection where people advanced…Read more...

In a complaint filed with the Vermont Human Rights Commission, Twin Valley Middle High School in Whitingham, Vermont is accused of not protecting a Black student from racial harassment, bullying and violent threats, according to the Associated Press.Read more...

Earlier this year, we told you that the upcoming DC Comics-based, Ava DuVernay-directed series Naomi received a pilot order on The CW.

After a two-week-long trial and almost 27 hours of deliberations by the jury, former Minnesota officer Kim Potter was found guilty of first- and second-degree manslaughter charges in the death of Daunte Wright as per USA Today. Potter, 49, fatally shot 20-year-old Wright during an April traffic stop-turned-arrest in…Read more...

Remember Blackkklansman? The movie? Well, that happened in real life, except the main character is white and was undercover in the Ku Klux Klan for way longer.Read more...

On Wednesday, the Black Film Critics Circle announced its winners for the 2021 season.Read more...

It may be too soon to confirm, but it appears there is yet another redhead in the British royal family. On Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex—also known as Harry and Meghan—kicked off the holiday weekend with a festive portrait of their young family of four, including a long-awaited look at their now…Read more...

Ex-cop and incoming NYC mayor Eric Adams is already fighting with more than half the city’s incoming council members, after they sent a letter saying they’re not feeling his plan to bring back solitary confinement at the infamous Rikers Island jail.

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It’s a Christmas miracle! Fresh off of getting booed in Dallas for saying he received the COVID-19 booster, former President Trump’s “the vaccine works” tour continues in a new interview with Candice Owens. Now, it could just be because recently, President Biden publically gave the Trump administration credit for…Read more...

Add The Wendy Williams Show to the growing list of productions affected by the current Covid-19 surge. According to People, the talk show will return from its holiday break a little later than planned.

I hadn’t seen Greg Brown Jr. since 1995, before he was sentenced to life in prison for three murders. I graduated from high school that year and left our neighborhood to go to college and become a functional adult. Greg was on a different path: he would spend the next two decades battling police, the Allegheny County…Read more...

Well, shit.Read more...

OK, so because I’m hella excited about this news, I’m not going to lead into this with some cutesy lede or a punny joke—I’m gonna cut right to the chase.

Researchers and archaeologists who have been analyzing and exploring the remains of the last U.S. slave ship on the coast of Alabama, aka the “Clotilda,” have discovered that most of the ship is still intact since it sank in 1860, according to the Associated Press.

Earlier this year in February, we reported that former NFL star Vincent Jackson was found dead at the Homewood Suites in Brandon, Fla. He was 38.Read more...

With the emergence of the Omicron variant leading to another surge in Covid-19 cases, and a slew of Broadway cancellations and closures, we knew it was only a matter of time before awards season was the next domino to fall.

Warning: This story contains descriptions that some readers may find disturbing.Read more...

Hear ye, hear ye!

ABC News has added another notable name to its groundbreaking docuseries Let the World See. Nia Long (The Best Man films, Love Jones) has joined the project to voice the words of Mamie Till-Mobley.

“It is about damn time!” said Michelle Young, better known as the most recent star of ABC’s long-running reality show, The Bachelorette. Time for what? Well, it only took 18 seasons, but as of Tuesday night, Young and her now-fiancé Nayte Olukoya were revealed to be the first Black couple to ever graduate the…Read more...

The investigations into the Astroworld tragedy that occurred at Houston’s NRG Park on November 5 will now be getting an extra assist from the federal government.Read more...

The Tacoma police chief has cleared the two officers involved in the March 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man from Tacoma, Washington. Ellis’ family is “heartbroken but not surprised,” according to The Seattle Times.Read more...

Covid-19 has found a new way to prove exactly how trash it is, this time by infecting Atlanta’s next mayor and causing chaos for Pittsburgh’s first-ever Black mayor elect, who got a false positive earlier this week.

Whew thank goodness someone finally asked Iman Shumpert what he thinks of LeBron’s business decisions.