The Root

The New York attorney who appealed on behalf of Bill Cosby and helped get his sexual assault conviction overturned has now joined R. Kelly’s legal team.

A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a Black former track coach for a Connecticut high school alleges that his firing was an act of retaliation for telling police that a student spat on him last year.

The Fugees announced Friday that their hotly-anticipated reunion tour, which was slated to begin Tuesday in Chicago, has been pushed back to early 2022.

Washington state’s Black Lives Matter Alliance has demanded the resignation of Ed Troyer–the county sheriff charged with falsely claiming his life was threatened by a Black newspaper carrier that he accused of being a porch pirate.

Halloween was one of my favorite annual celebrations as a child—until my reckoning with racism almost claimed that joy.

A troubling finding has surfaced about some of what transpired during the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, according to a new report by Politico. On January 5, a day before the riot, a U.S. Capitol Police memo asked officers to be ready if an attack occurred, but parts of their planning were misguided.

Black-ish is going out big—as it should. Kenya Barris’ hit ABC series, which spawned the spinoffs Grown-ish and the now-canceled Mixed-ish (with Old-ish and Brown-ish presumably still in development by the network) will end with its eighth season, as The Root reported in May. And though it’s the final season, the…Read more...

Oh Hell No, a new comedy from Sony that was supposed to feature Ice Cube and Jack Black in co-starring roles, just lost Cube because he didn’t want to get vaccinated, which was a requirement for the film’s cast.Read more...

With four Primetime Emmys, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, Regina King is not only Hollywood royalty; she is one of the most decorated Black actors in history—while still at the height of her already decades-long career. Now, she can add another accolade to her growing list, as King just cemented her legacy in…Read more...

Man, white people are mad this week!Read more...

While some kids get their first job or spend weeks from home at sleep away camp during the summers, others make videos of themselves with a friend playing in a white hood and using the N-word.Read more...

It’s better to stand with her than to stand against her because award-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is always going to come out on top.Read more...

Jovita Moore, a beloved anchor at Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News, has died, seven months after being diagnosed with “an aggressive form of brain cancer,” reports WSB-TV. Moore died late Thursday night at age 53.Read more...

Fetty Wap was billed among several headliners at Rolling Loud New York at Citi Field this weekend. Instead, he may be headed to jail. According to Page Six, the “Trap Queen” rapper, born William Junior Maxwell II, was arrested at the Mets’ home stadium by FBI agents late Thursday afternoon, on federal drug charges.Read more...

Everything they own in a box to the left? Not quite, but just in time for spooky season, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are listing their gothic 13,300 square-foot, 95-year-old New Orleans mansion, the church-turned-ballet school-turned-celebrity residence also known as La Casa de Castille.Read more...

Fair Fight Political Action Committee, allied with the Fair Fight organization founded by voting rights activist and political badass Stacey Abrams, donated over a million dollars to help thousands of Americans bogged down by medical debt.Read more...

Queen Sugar is one of my favorite shows. So much so, that I do a whole-ass podcast about it and never miss an episode. I have kept up with Charley, Nova, Ralph Angel, Aunt Vi, Hollywood, Darla, Prosper and the assortment of other folks who weave in and out of storylines since the show debuted in 2016. When people…Read more...

For anyone who supported the George Floyd protests last year and is wondering how you can help support change now, there’s an important election in Minneapolis that you should be paying attention to. If George Floyd’s murder taught us anything, it’s that the police should not have to be experts for every situation. In…Read more...

How you spend your free time is nobody’s business but your own. But as for me and my 85-inch TV? We watch about as much baseball as we do Fox News—which is exactly none.Read more...

On Sept. 18, 1977, a little-known comedian was canceled in real-time.

Throughout the course of my adult life, there have been plenty of times where I watched or read the news and thought out loud, “What the fuck is wrong is with Texas?” But with the state that’s given us Jerry Jones, Ted Cruz, and breast implants taking its ain’t shit-ness to another level by recently passing a series…Read more...

The families of nine people killed in a 2015 mass shooting at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. reached an $88 million settlement with the Department of Justice, claiming that authorities should have stopped Dylann Roof from purchasing a pistol.Read more...

It’s not exactly a secret that the Rooney Rule is trash. But now the argument can be made that after its latest policy update, it’s somehow even more worthless for the same minority candidates it was designed to benefit in the first place.Read more...

Two officers were indicted by a grand jury on Tuesday for the death of 26 year-old Jamarion Robinson, a Black man who was shot 76 times during a raid on his girlfriend’s apartment in East Point, Ga., back in 2016.Read more...

All aboard, good people!Read more...

Though convicted sex trafficker and disgraced entertainer R. Kelly may be sitting in a federal jail cell in New York right now, to let his most diehard fans tell it, that conviction doesn’t and shouldn’t take away from his many years of accolades and accomplishments he’s garnered throughout his musical career. Chief…Read more...

The civil rights movement was a pivotal time for Black people in America. Cities such as Selma, Montgomery, and Atlanta were placed in the national spotlight not just because of acts of racism that occurred there, but the strength and perseverance of the African American men and women who fought for justice. While…Read more...

When I learned about slave catcher laws from the Civil War era in my ninth grade U.S. history class, the last thing I expected was to be reading about them being used in a legal battle in the 21st century.Read more...

What does it take to build a world? For Namina Forma, it took drawing on both her experiences growing up in Sierra Leone and America to help create the world of her first YA fantasy novel, The Gilded Ones (Penguin Random House).Read more...

Black in the Day is an ongoing series about Black nostalgia that covers very specific topics. This week, it’s all about words or phrases that you might have heard growing up.Read more...

New York Attorney General Letitia James will be running for governor according to sources close to her office. She is expected to announce her bid for the November 2022 election later this week. In 2018, James became both the first woman and Black person elected to serve as the state’s attorney general.Read more...

After noticing that most of the Black people she saw on the news with COVID-19 were obese, Brianna Oyewo, who was nearly 300 pounds, transformed her body during the height of a global epidemic.

Remember in Baby Boy, when Sweet Pea is about to sock one of the kids who did Jody dirty, and he goes, “Awww, shit. This nigga got heart!”? That’s the Oklahoma City Thunder.Read more...

On the latest episode of Facebook Watch’s popular series, Red Table Talk, co-hosts Jada Pinkett-Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, aka Gammy, sat down with Academy Award-winning actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow for a conversation on all things sex and sexual wellness.Read more...

Nine-time world champion Claressa Shields, who became boxing’s first-ever two-division champion in March, has been on an undefeated warpath throughout the course of her professional fighting career. And in her quest to satiate her desire for an even bigger challenge, in June, she courageously made the leap into mixed…Read more...

The ongoing back-and-forth feud between on-again, off-again friends and former Real Housewives of Atlanta stars NeNe Leakes and Cynthia Bailey has just added a new layer.Read more...

“Girl, you saw this Peloton x Beyoncé series? You, me, 6 a.m.”Read more...

The life of Dwight “DJ” Grant came to a tragic end on the evening of October 17. He was stabbed in the neck with a knife, and his chest was pierced open by the thrust of a sword. Police say a surveillance camera captured footage of the incident that left an 18-year-old high school student dead and could forever change…Read more...

As the only Black driver in the history of Formula One, it’s safe to say that Lewis Hamilton is in a very unique position every time he hits the race track. To that end, he’s been very vocal in the past about the need to improve diversity throughout the sport and makes it a point to use his own platform to call for…Read more...

With the amount of confidence an unidentified man had to throw paint on the George Floyd statue in New York City’s Union Square Park earlier this month (in broad daylight, by the way), I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he’d never get caught.Read more...

“Before we take on our abusers, survivors must take all the time we need to heal,” says Drew Dixon, the acclaimed music exec who was among several women to go public with rape allegations against Russell Simmons in the documentary On the Record. During a press conference at the New York offices of victim’s services…Read more...

While the nation waited on pins and needles for every discovery made in the Gabby Petito case, Black people wondered where the concern (and massive amounts of media coverage) was for missing Black persons. Especially in the case of Jelani Day.Read more...

First things first, let me just caveat this story by making it abundantly clear that this is NOT an Azealia Banks stan account.Read more...

Politics are weird AF. For instance, the Virginia governor’s race—one I happen to be witnessing (via force) from a front-row seat in Washington, D.C.—has reached extinction-level event levels of mudslinging. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee whose ads make me hate him as a person, and Terry McAuliffe, the…Read more...

The trial for Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager who is accused of shooting and killing two protestors and wounding another in Kenosha, Wis., last summer, begins next week and there’s already a feeling that a miscarriage of justice may take place.Read more...

You know, Colin, I’m kinda hurt, bruh.Read more...

The Real Housewives of Atlanta are heading back to our screens for season 14 soon, only this time, we’ll be seeing a mix of old and new faces.

In case you haven’t noticed, there are plenty of job openings every-damn-where. But while most of them have been abandoned due to inept leadership, unfavorable work conditions, or meager wages, there are a handful of rather desirable head coaching vacancies at Division I college football programs like USC and LSU. Yet…Read more...

Being the James Bond enthusiast that I am, I recently went to the movies to see No Time To Die (Daniel Craig is still the man, I might add). This wasn’t the first time I’ve been to the movies since the COVID-19 pandemic began last year, but it is definitely the first big release I’ve attended.Read more...

Sedrick Altheimer is coming for the justice he seeks after a swarm of Tacoma, Wa., police officers descended on him in his car while he was delivering newspapers on Jan. 27. Altheimer was surrounded, questioned and searched after Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer made a frantic call for backup accusing the newspaper …Read more...