BLK News - Breaking News and Culture
Obama Presidential Center Opens on Juneteenth, Rooting Black Legacy on Chicago’s South Side
After nearly five years of construction, the Obama Presidential Center opens to the public on June 19, choosing Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery
Juneteenth 2026 Celebrations Roll Out Across the Country as the Nation Marks Its 250th Year
Months before the first parade steps off, the shape of Juneteenth 2026 is already coming into view. Across the country, NAACP branches, city governments, and community
ABFF 2026 Opens with World Premiere of Peacock’s “Strung,” a Psychological Thriller Marking 30 Years of Black Cinema’s Boldest Festival
The American Black Film Festival turns 30 this year, and it is opening its anniversary edition with a film that says a lot about where Black
Jalen Brunson Scores 45 Points to Lead New York Knicks to First NBA Championship in 53 Years
The 29-year-old guard delivered a franchise Finals record performance in Game 5, earning unanimous MVP honors and ending New York’s half-century championship drought with a 94-90 road victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night. A Closeout Performance Built for the Moment Jalen Brunson had already established himself as
Mansa Musa, The Mali Empire King Often Called History’s Richest Person
Some rulers are remembered for what they owned. Mansa Musa, the 14th-century emperor of the Mali Empire, is remembered for what his wealth revealed. Widely described as the richest person in history, a title that is impossible to verify and arguably impossible to calculate, Musa commanded a West African state
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Black Tech Founder DuMarkus Davis Builds Musicbuk Toward A “Billion-Dollar” Vision
The classically trained violinist turned tech CEO is rebuilding his Atlanta-rooted music education startup after a sweeping reset — and aiming far higher than where he started DuMarkus Davis does not describe himself in modest terms. The founder and CEO of Musicbuk, a tech platform that connects aspiring musicians with vetted instructors, has publicly framed his ambition as building a billion-dollar company, paired with a team aligned to that vision. That goal, profiled in Inc. Magazine’s “Black in Business” coverage, is striking on its own. What gives it weight is the path Davis took to get there — one that included firing his co-founder, his board, and most of his team in a single year and starting over. His story has resurfaced in entrepreneurship coverage at a moment when Black founders continue to navigate a tightened funding environment, making the conversation about discipline, ownership, and long-horizon building especially relevant. From Conservatory To Startup Davis is a classically trained violinist who grew up in College Park, Georgia, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, graduating in 2018. He is a 2013 Gates Millennium Scholar, and he served as the first Black student body chairman at the conservatory. The idea for Musicbuk grew out of his own teaching experience. While auditioning for orchestra positions and teaching private violin lessons after graduation, Davis observed that music schools were charging students $80 to $90 per session while paying their instructors closer to $20. He turned down an orchestra job offer to build a platform that would give musicians a more direct way to teach, earn, and connect with students. He founded Musicbuk in 2018. The company has evolved since. According to public profiles and Inc.’s reporting, Musicbuk moved from a direct-to-consumer approach to a B2B model
Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame Announces 2026 Inductees, Including Ludacris and Davido
Atlanta is preparing to celebrate another class of culture-shaping figures. The Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame (BMEWOF) has announced its 2026 inductees, a
Byron Allen Becomes Chairman and CEO of BuzzFeed in $120 Million Majority-Stake Deal
Byron Allen is making one of the boldest moves of his career. The Detroit-born media entrepreneur announced Monday that his family office, Allen Family Digital,
HBCU Presidents Launch National Research Coalition to Accelerate Innovation Across Black Colleges
A historic coalition of fifteen Historically Black Colleges and Universities has launched a national research association designed to expand the research mission of HBCUs, accelerate
From Wall Street to the South Loop: Chicago’s First Black Chick-fil-A Owner Is Building More Than a Business
Before Kareem Edwards was handing out chicken sandwiches, he was surviving the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The Queens-born entrepreneur has lived many lives — Wall
Music
Mikaal Sulaiman Makes Tony History As First Black Winner For Sound Design
Mikaal Sulaiman walked off the stage at Radio City Music Hall on June 7 holding a Tony Award and a piece of Broadway history. His win for Best Sound Design of a Play, for the revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” made him the first Black designer to take the category in its history, a recognition for a craft that rarely shares the spotlight with the actors and directors it supports. A First In A Category That Has Existed Twice The Tony for Best Sound Design of a Play was created in 2008, with Mic Pool winning the inaugural prize for “The 39 Steps.” The Tony administration discontinued both sound categories after 2014, then brought them back in 2018. Across that uneven timeline, no Black designer had won until Sulaiman’s name was called this year. He prevailed over a competitive field that included Justin Ellington for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” Tom Gibbons for “Oedipus,” Lee Kinney for “The Fear of 13,” and Josh Schmidt for “Bug.” The win was also a measure of persistence: Sulaiman had been nominated in the same category before, for the 2022 revival of “Macbeth,” and lost. This time the result changed. The Work Behind The Win Sulaiman’s task on “Death of a Salesman” was a technical problem disguised as an artistic one. The Winter Garden Theatre is a large house, and Miller’s play is dense, interior, and built on the unraveling thoughts of a single man. In an interview with Live Design, Sulaiman described prioritizing intimacy, designing the sound so that every voice reached the audience as if it came directly from the actor rather than from the theater’s speaker system. That approach was rooted in his early involvement. He told Playbill he was attached to the production “from day one, through tech and previews,” tracking director Joe Mantello’s evolving ideas from the first rehearsal. The revival, which opened April 9 and runs through August 9, led the 2026 ceremony with six wins, including Best Revival of a Play and Best Direction of a Play for Mantello, alongside design honors for scenic designer Chloe Lamford and lighting designer Jack Knowles. Laurie Metcalf also took home an acting Tony for the production. A Path From Rochester To The Tony Stage Sulaiman’s route to the win runs through several disciplines. Originally from Rochester, New York, and now based in Los Angeles, he works as a sound designer and composer. He earned a BFA from the University of the Arts and studied the Jacques Lecoq approach to avant-garde theater at the London International School of Performing Arts, a movement-based tradition that informs how he thinks about staging and rhythm. His Broadway credits trace a steady climb. He made his Broadway debut designing 2021’s “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” followed by the “Macbeth” revival with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga that earned him his first Tony nomination. His broader body of work includes the Pulitzer-winning “Fat Ham,” “Doubt” with Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan, and “Enemy
Black Music Month Spotlights the Recording Academy Collective Investing in the Next Generation
June is Black Music Month, the annual observance recognizing the foundational role of Black artistry across nearly every American genre. For the Recording Academy’s Black
One Clause. One Artist. $450 Million for Thousands of Musicians — Many of Them Black
In November 2018, Taylor Swift made a decision that had nothing to do with her own bottom line. When she signed with Universal Music Group’s
How African Dance Continues to Influence Global Arts and Movements
African dance continues to influence global arts and movements by shaping modern dance styles, music trends, fashion, and social expression. Its rhythms, body movements, and
The Timeless Connection Between African Americans and Jazz
Jazz is a uniquely African American art form that remains a powerful symbol of cultural identity, creativity, and resilience in 2026. Born from the history
Lifestyle
One in Four Cowboys of the Old West Was Black
The cowboy is one of America’s most enduring symbols, the rugged, horseback-riding figure of open plains and cattle drives. In the popular imagination, shaped by a century of films, dime novels, and television, that figure is almost always white. The historical record tells a different story. Historians estimate that up to one in four cowboys during the great cattle-drive era were Black, a presence so substantial that the modern myth amounts to a deliberate erasure of the people who helped build the American West. Freedom Found on the Open Range The story of the Black cowboy begins with emancipation. When the Civil War ended in 1865, many formerly enslaved men left the South in large numbers, seeking a living and a measure of independence on the wild, roaming plains. A significant number already had the skills the work demanded. In Texas, cattle country since its colonization by Spain in the 1500s, enslaved people had long handled livestock, breaking horses, herding cattle, and working the range. Those skills became valuable currency after the war. The open range offered something rare for Black men in nineteenth-century America: autonomy. The work was brutal, dangerous, lonely, and poorly paid, which is part of why
Black Maternal Health Week 2026 Turns 10 — Communities Are No Longer Waiting
A decade ago, Black Maternal Health Week was a declaration. In 2026, it is an infrastructure. What began as a campaign to name and confront the crisis of Black maternal mortality has grown into a nationwide network of birth workers, organizers, advocates, and community members who have stopped waiting for broken systems to fix themselves — and started building their own. The 10th annual Black Maternal Health Week, themed “Rooted in Justice and Joy,” officially opened following a community walk in Atlanta on April 11, where families, birth workers, and advocates gathered for what has become an annual rallying kickoff. From that opening walk, the energy spread across the country — city by city, block by block — through a week of events that looked less like awareness campaigns and more like community architecture. A Movement That Grew Its Own Roots When Black Mamas Matter Alliance launched Black Maternal Health Week in 2017, it entered a public conversation that had largely failed to center Black women. Maternal mortality rates for Black women in the United States remain disproportionately high compared to white women — a disparity driven not by biology, but by systemic failures in access, treatment, and trust. The
Six Black Scholars Honored by the Nation’s Largest Education Research Association for Work Centering Black Students
The American Educational Research Association has announced its 2026 award recipients — and six Black scholars are among the honorees, recognized for work that is directly shaping how this country understands education, race, and student achievement at every level of schooling. The American Educational Research Association announced the winners of its 2026 awards for excellence in education research. “We are honored to recognize the recipients of the 2026 awards, an outstanding and inspiring group of education researchers and leaders,” said AERA Executive Director Tabbye Chavous. “Their contributions continue to advance education research and positively impact countless students, educators, and the environments in which they live, learn, and work.” The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme — “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research” — is “an invitation to collectively reflect on how to leverage our disciplinary and methodological diversity in service of unforgetting histories.” The honorees will be recognized at the Awards Ceremony Luncheon at the 2026 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles on April 9. The six Black scholars recognized this cycle represent institutions across the country — the University of Pennsylvania, Florida State University, Vanderbilt University, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois at
Misty Copeland Expands Her Legacy Beyond Ballet With Advocacy and Creative Projects
Misty Copeland is not slowing down. After finishing her career as the first Black principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in October 2025, she is focusing on work that helps others. Her recent appearance at the 2026 Oscars showed that she still has a powerful place in the world of dance. She is now using her fame to make ballet more inclusive and to start new projects in film and education. This new chapter is not just about her own dancing, but about making sure the next generation of artists has a clear path to follow. A Historic Return at the 2026 Oscars On March 15, 2026, many people were surprised to see Misty Copeland on stage during the Academy Awards. She performed during a live version of the song “I Lied to You” from the film Sinners. This was a significant moment because she had hip replacement surgery only three months earlier, in December 2025. She wore a special costume for the performance. It was a Firebird outfit from a 1982 production by the Dance Theater of Harlem. The costume included a Sankofa emblem, which is a symbol from Ghana that means “go back and get it.” This
How Black Women Use Hair Rituals to Build Routine and Identity
Braiding and protective styles are more than grooming choices. For many Black women, they serve as structured routines that support both hair health and emotional well-being. These styles include box braids, twists, cornrows, and locs. Each method involves securing the hair in a way that reduces breakage and limits exposure to heat or friction. The process of braiding often takes time and care. Whether done at home or in a salon, it can involve hours of focused attention. This time is not only about styling but also about reflection, rest, and connection. Some women use this period to listen to music, talk with loved ones, or simply sit quietly. Protective styles also offer flexibility. They allow for low-maintenance care while preserving length and texture. For those managing busy schedules, these styles can reduce daily stress around grooming. They also provide a way to experiment with color, shape, and accessories without altering the natural hair. Beyond function, braiding carries cultural meaning. It reflects traditions passed through generations and honors techniques developed long before modern hair tools. Choosing a braid pattern or adding beads and shells can be a way to express personal history or celebrate heritage. This cultural significance is shared
Why People Prefer to Exercise in the Morning
Exercise routines vary widely, but many people choose to move their bodies early in the day. Morning workouts offer a sense of structure and calm before daily responsibilities begin. This preference isn’t just about habit. It reflects how the body and mind respond to timing, energy levels, and environmental factors. This article explores how morning exercise supports mental clarity, how it fits into daily routines, how it interacts with physical systems, and how it influences long-term consistency. How Morning Movement Supports Mental Clarity Starting the day with physical activity can help clear mental fog. After waking, the body begins to shift from rest to alertness. Movement supports this transition by increasing blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain. These changes help improve focus and reduce grogginess. Cortisol, a hormone linked to alertness, tends to peak in the early morning. This natural rhythm may make the body more responsive to exercise at that time. People often report feeling more awake and mentally prepared after a morning workout. Exercise also supports emotional balance. Physical movement triggers the release of endorphins, which help reduce stress and improve mood. These effects can carry into the rest of the day, making tasks feel more