Culture

wellness · 9 min

Put the Oxygen Mask on You First

TaKenya Clark-Jefferies has spent sixteen years sitting with people in their hardest seasons. Her message for the women who hold everyone else together is simple, and it is not selfish: you are on the list too.

news · 4 min

The Museum Turns Ten

Ten years ago a bronze crown rose on the National Mall and told the whole country: this history is your history. This month the family comes home to celebrate.

money · 3 min

Your Rent Just Started Counting

For decades the mortgage system ignored the biggest bill most of us pay on time every month. As of this spring, the rules changed. Here is what moved and what you have to do to benefit.

game · 2 min

Sha'Carri Is Back, and Smiling

Two summers ago she was hurt and quiet. In July she ran 10.77 in New York, won her third national title, and said the word we needed to hear most: healthy.

entertainment · 3 min

Eighteen Black Films Go to Toronto

The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10 to 20, and the slate carries stories from Houston to Lagos to Kigali. Chris Rock brought a satire. Mahershala Ali brought a hitman. Here is your watch list.

studio · 2 min

Amy Sherald Took Her Show Home

The painter of the Michelle Obama portrait pulled her biggest exhibition out of the Smithsonian rather than let one painting be explained away. Then Baltimore broke its attendance record for her. The tour ends in Atlanta.

come-up · 3 min

Seven Names to Know This Fall

A Green Lantern from South London. A two-time Tony winner. A first-time director who beat Cannes. Learn these names now, before everybody else says they knew.

legends · 3 min

Ray Charles Asked for His Masters. In 1959.

He was born in Georgia on September 23, 1930, went blind at seven, and by twenty-nine had negotiated a record deal that Frank Sinatra did not have. The genius was in the music. The blueprint was in the contract.

tech · 2 min

The Professor Who Put Many Brains on One Chip

In the 1990s Kunle Olukotun argued that a computer chip should hold many small processors instead of one big one. Everyone said no. Now every phone works his way, and his AI chip company just raised 350 million dollars.

ai · 3 min

The Robot Doesn't Know Your Zip Code

Artificial intelligence just made it cheap to build a company. It did not make it cheap to grow one. For Black founders that changes exactly which door is locked, and how to get through it.

schools · 3 min

The Freshman Class Broke the Record Again

North Carolina A&T just enrolled 15,700 students and its largest first-year class ever. It is the thirteenth straight year of growth, and it is not alone. Across the country, HBCUs opened this fall bigger than they have ever been.

wellness · 3 min

The Fourth Trimester Needs a Village

New research asked Black mothers what actually helped them after the baby came. The answers were not complicated. They were just not being offered.