Erika James was appointed Dean of Goizueta Business School in May 2014, becoming only one of three African American’s deans at an American colleges of business.  She’s also the first minority woman to head a full-time MBA program at a top-25 business school. Prior to her position at Emory, James served as Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education […]

We have compiled a list of ten black [and some not so black] films that shifted not only the world of cinema but culture as a whole. Do The Right Thing, 1989 Probably the most popular Spike Lee movie to-date, Do The Right Thing was both commercially and critically acclaimed, landing Lee with an Oscar […]

There are a lot of  people that can do many things, but only a few people that can do many things well. Scholar, educator, talk-show host, author, activist, wife and mother Melissa Harris-Perry is one of those people. The 41-year-old host of her self-titled MSNBC talk show, Harris-Perry has broken barriers in the competitive landscape […]

If you haven’t heard of Gregory Porter, allow us to introduce you to the Grammy Award-winning  jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actor. Raised in Bakersfield, California, Porter’s is a product of a single parent home where he was one of eight children reared by his mother. Growing up in California, Porter and his brother had a few run ins […]

 Director Ava DuVernay has only made four movies, but she’s already broken barriers in the film industry. The one-time film publicist harbored a desire to make her own movies, and finally did with the breakout success of her first film, I Will Follow, made independently on a limited budget. When she was faced with distribution […]

An early interest in books and writing essays as punishment worked oddly in Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ favor. As national correspondent at The Atlantic, he writes about culture, politics and social issues. His work can also be found in The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, O Magazine and other notable publications. The Baltimore, Maryland native is the […]

Words can be a powerful tool for change. Here are 10 speeches by African-Americans whose words impacted everyone who heard them. President Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Address Many believed we would never see a Black President, so on January 20, 2009 when Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, […]

Kamala Harris has already accomplished some impressive ‘firsts.’ She’s the first female, the first African-American and the first Asian-American to become Attorney General of California, a post she was elected to in 2010 and reelected to last year. Harris, 50, whose mother is Tamil Indian and whose father is Jamaican-American, is a graduate of Howard University […]

After 179 years since it was first discovered, Shreveport has its first black female Mayor. Ollie Tyler was named the city’s 48th Mayor in December 2014 after spending 43 years in education. “I think for those who come behind me as African Americans, it does give them hope, and it does give them inspiration that this is […]

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech is etched into the American consciousness because of its call for a truly color-blind society. While that utopian sensibility may fall short of reality, the Dream Defenders are doing their best to bring us closer to that ideal. The group began in Florida in […]

Meet Hakeem Jeffries, the former corporate lawyer at CBS and Viacom turned politician. The Crown Heights, Brooklyn native was the Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New York’s 8th congressional district in Brooklyn and Queens. He received his bachelor’s in political science from Binghamton University with honors and graduated from New York University School of Law as […]

Thousands of African-American inventors have developed various inventions over the years that have greatly impacted culture. However, today we are highlighting only 10 African-American inventors who have “shifted” the fields of science, medicine and technology. Dr. Patricia E. Bath She was the first African-American female doctor to receive a patent in medicine for her invention […]