The Spiritual Jazz of Alice Coltrane | Adam Shatz Alice Coltrane reinvented her adoptive Hinduism by interweaving it with the music of the Black church. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

"But the question of how to thoughtfully transform a historic island into a functioning town is not just about the self-determination of small places. It is also increasingly about fighting gentrification..." csmonitor.com/USA/Society/... | @csmonitor.bsky.social

After Smithsonian controversy, Amy Sherald opens to fanfare in Baltimore “There’s no downcast eyes. There’s no one looking away...There is not a single figure that we encounter in her work that carries a gaze of ‘I don’t belong.’” wapo.st/4i0ukaB

'Cameron and Cayden Boozer didn’t always want to follow their father, Carlos, to Durham. Now that they did, another promising Blue Devils season is in their hands.' The twin sons of a former Duke star are the program’s next great hope wapo.st/47xUv4R

"I’m becoming a mother at the same time that I’m becoming a Black feminist. And what I knew is that I wanted something different for my sons." ‘Freeing Black Girls’ and ‘Loving Black Boys’: Tamura Lomax on Revolutionary Mothering During Troubled Times msmagazine.com/2025/10/23/b...

How Grace Jones and Ming Smith Met as Models and Became Artistic Allies | Uri McMillan www.artnews.com/art-in-ameri...

The Complex Role of Slavery in Building America’s Wealth The world’s largest slave society was a crucial factor in the country’s economic takeoff beyond what’s commonly assumed www.wsj.com/economy/slav... | @wsj.com

"Groove Theory’s approach to the love song is, instead, to ask the question: What if the spectacle is patience? Or what if the spectacle is slow, consistent sacrifice?" 30 Years Later: Groove Theory, “Groove Theory” | Hanif Abdurraqib | @longreads.com longreads.com/2025/10/23/g...

How to Lose the Hounds: Maroon Geographies and a World Beyond Policing | Left of Black with critical geographer Celeste Winston How have 20th century examples of marronage offered a glimpse into a what life could be with police abolition? www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W0A...

"When I first heard Sam Cooke’s music, I had no idea that he had a legacy, that his voice had been tragically silenced in the prime of his life or that he once sang with one of my father’s favorite Gospel groups." medium.com/p/441275a6f258

The Next Era of the American University | Aziz Huq | @theatlantic.com Higher education can—and should—fight the Trump administration, but the age of lavish government support is coming to a close www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Marcyliena Morgan, Founder of Harvard’s Hip-Hop Archive, Dies at 75 Her university’s vast collection of albums, scholarly essays and other ephemera helped establish rap as a course of serious study on a par with classical music www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/a...

"We’re living in the time of “big Black data”—a term coined by Mark Anthony Neal...to describe this era in which historical and present-day Black cultural archives have never been more accessible—and yet American fascism is turning our web pages into 404 errors." hammerandhope.org/article/vibe...

Anyone recall where they were when they first heard this? #blackskyover40 ##blackskyover50 youtu.be/PmCQHWa0AEk?...

'Marcus Miller breaks down Luther Vandross: Never Too Much: Greatest Hits, reflecting on his time working with Luther and the making of some of R&B’s most timeless songs.' #BlackSkyOver40 www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKTo...

"The first time I saw a photograph of Omar ibn Said, when I was a young photographer, I felt as if he was speaking to me. I took away one simple instruction: Remember." -- Laylah Amatullah Barrayn www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/o...

“I would say that my sound is a romantic sound. It’s water. It’s ocean. It’s tranquility.” — Jon Lucien Remembering the Sensual Soul of Jon Lucien medium.com/@tnimixtape/...

‘Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life’ Now on View at Howard. A new exhibition explores an underexamined chapter of the famed photographer’s documentation of religion in Black communities during the 20th Century. wordinblack.com/2025/10/gord...

Climate Disasters Are Destroying Black Retirements and the American Dream Early retirement withdrawals for hardship have tripled since 2020, as disasters strike and insurance fails — leaving workers on their own in old age. capitalbnews.org/black-retire...

Hurricane Melissa strengthens into category 4 as it approaches Jamaica Storm could intensify further, threatening to cause catastrophic flooding in the northern Caribbean, including Haiti www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

In Letitia James Case, Some Black Women See Their Own Family Sacrifices The federal indictment of New York’s attorney general centers on a home she purchased for a relative. It is an act that rings deeply familiar to many www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/n...

"My mother was intentional about making sure that reading would be a fundamental part of my life. I still have memories of running my fingers over the pages The Berenstain Bears’ The Bike Lesson or reading periodicals like Weekly Reader..."

Will Zohran Mamdani Win Over Black New Yorkers? | @hammerandhope.bsky.social Five people talk about their experience of the Mamdani campaign — from the inside and the outside. hammerandhope.org/article/zohr...

Lady Wray on Drawing From Gospel Roots for ‘Cover Girl,’ Her Most Dynamic Album Yet: ‘You Can’t Fake This’ variety.com/2025/music/n...

D’Angelo’s Death Highlights Disparities in Pancreatic Cancer Among Black Men D’Angelo’s passing underscores an urgent health crisis, as Black men face higher rates of pancreatic cancer and delayed diagnoses. wordinblack.com/2025/10/dang...

"The only new ideas emanating from the left in this period have been synthesized in cloistered, conservative-free universities and thus far have only driven less privileged citizens into the welcoming arms of the reactionary right." -- @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

"If you’re a critic whose primary medium is TikTok or YouTube, you’re working in formats that encourage volume...That requires you to work at a pace that is completely incompatible with doing a thought-out review" www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

"D’Angelo also chafed at the description of his music as simply neo-soul. “I never claimed I do neo-soul,” he said in a Red Bull Music Academy interview in 2014. “When I first came out, I used to always say: ‘I do Black music. I make Black music.’” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/a...

Is the Patient Black? Check this Box for Yes | Anissa Durham | @wordinblacknews.bsky.social For years doctors relied on a race-based medical calculation that kept Black patients from accessing life-saving kidney transplants. wordinblack.com/2025/10/is-t...

Simply unbelievable. And to think about what was coming in his honor in the near future . . . 🥺😔 There are no words but this was my offering, once. For @markanthonyneal.bsky.social: www.newblackmaninexile.net/2014/12/the-...

@markanthonyneal.bsky.social, did you see this? So sad. I mean ... that first album ... so many memories. He was indeed the soundtrack of the mid to late 1990s.

What Pan-Africanism Can Teach Us Now A biography of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah casts the post-WWII era as a Black liberation epic rather than a psychodrama between Moscow and Washington. newrepublic.com/article/1997...

The Underground Railroad’s Stealth Sailors | Eric Foner | @nybooks.com The web of Atlantic trading routes and solidarity among maritime workers, many of them Black, meant fugitive slaves’ chances of reaching freedom were better below deck than over land. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

“The right’s war on the academy and education is part of a generational war over what young people, especially young white people, will be taught and how they will be socialized." www.bostonreview.net/articles/bui...

Ah, nostalgia. #SlickRick #RapMusic #UKRapper #HipHopMusic #Emcee #StoryTeller #BlackMusicSky Y'all, he's 60 and still doing the damn thang. #BlackSkyOver40 #BlackSkyOver50 #BlackSkyOver60 #BlackSkyOver70

I never have the expectation that all Black people will line up together. My view is built around meaningful political solidarity, not just identity-based solidarity.” -- Cathy J. Cohen Building a Political Home | @bostonreview.bsky.social with Brandon Terry www.bostonreview.net/articles/bui...

I love this so much. Reminds me of Simone Leigh's sculptures which often have parts of the face obscured (eyes, or mouth, or both) or entire face replaced with roses (or shells, or a jug or vessel, etc.). So many Black women artists occassionally use this device.

“The Message is Still the Same”: The Soul Gospel of D.J. Rogers by Mark Anthony Neal medium.com/p/1556de4e8173 #BlackSkyOver40 #BlackSky40

"by presenting us with bodies and not faces, Simpson engages in a kind of anti-representation. She remakes, in her masked-nude photographs, the Black woman as an icon of withholding." -- Doreen St. Félix www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...

After 35 years at UT Austin, I hardly recognize my university | @austinstatesman.bsky.social What was once a beacon of access and discovery is now fighting for its soul and mission as political attacks upend norms, rules and rights www.statesman.com/opinion/colu...

“performing is what sort of keeps me going. I have to sing, if it’s in the alley to a wino. I have to sing. Even if it’s just to myself, because that’s how I express how I feel.” -- D.J. Rogers medium.com/p/1556de4e8173

"Americans, meanwhile, are already paying other people—a lot—to care for their children. According to 2022 data from the National Database of Childcare Prices, families with just one child spend 8.9 to 16% of their median income for child care..." www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/...

What do you do when the justice system you rely on for redress fails you and you have to take matters into your own hands? Kali Gross discusses her book 'Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times' (Seal Press) via #LeftOfBlack #Season15 www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gyZ...

There’s Never Been a Worse Time to Be Authentic at Work Workers have been told to bring themselves to work, only to be disappointed time and time again, argues author Jodi-Ann Burey in her new book www.wired.com/story/theres...

Pew Finds Just 6% of Journalists Are Black as Crisis Grows with Recent Firings | @blackpressusa.bsky.social blackpressusa.com/pew-finds-ju...

The Hiphop Archive and Research Institute the house that the late Dr. Marcyliena Morgan built. I was honored to bring #LeftOfBlack to her house 12 years ago to discuss her vision for the study of HipHop Culture.

‘How much hip-hop iconography would be considered anti-American under this new regime of revisionist history? Where would our legacy live, if banned from the Internet, besides our heads and our hearts? How would we preserve it for future generations?’ Urgent 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ question too

"Mark Anthony Neal notes the unprecedented "accessibility of the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness"...But "laments how digital accessibility has reduced our music to "the ambient background of the continued exploitation & commodification of Black culture." www.npr.org/2025/10/01/g...

"To him, Bruce was as effective a teacher as John Wooden. Both were focused on fundamentals, preparation, and what worked." When Bruce Lee Trained With Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Jeff Chang | @lithub.com.web.brid.gy lithub.com/when-bruce-l...