Todd Steven Burroughs is the author of "Marvel's Black Panther: A Comic Book Biography, From Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates" and "Warrior Princess: A People's History of Ida B. Wells."
Yeah, I went Saturday—after I went to Khem Fest, the independent, Afrocentric comicbook convention across the street. Some newsman I am, right? I choose my fellow geeks over the front row of a Presidential campaign announcement by someone who’s been running for president for more than two months. It would have been…
Still trying to process the life, the transition into Ancestry, and the funeral. It’s been two days, and I haven’t let any of it go yet.
It can be disorienting when the past, present and future collide, particularly in a sacred, public, historically communal space. It requires a special kind of courage, because it’s not just memories that cloud: it’s sights and sounds of people that remind one of sights and sounds of other people—folks long gone but…
Newark finally got back control of its schools from the state of New Jersey on Feb. 1, and the way it looked in a city with only two employers for a majority of its working-class population (the city government and the schools), it was literally like a family got control of its house back.
Editor’s note: This excerpt from Marvel’s Black Panther: A Comicbook Biography, From Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates (published by Diasporic Africa Press, 2018) talks about the impact black filmmaker Reginald Hudlin had on the character. For the first 32 years of its existence, the Black Panther—created by Marvel Comics…
How scared, anxious and angry has Agent Orange, a.k.a. President Trump, made folks? Mark Thompson, a Sirius XM radio host, said his 14-old-son is afraid to be drafted to go to war.
At what point does lighting the candle instead of cursing the darkness become an example of just plain—and deliberate—political impotence?
It’s a violation of my Green Lantern oath as a historian, but perhaps it’s a waste of time in 2017 to talk about the “real” Harriet Tubman versus the Harriet Tubman of our collective imagination.
