NPR

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license, American Airlines operated a flight out of Dallas with an all-Black, all-female crew. In honor of the 100th anniversary of Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license, American Airlines operated a flight out of Dallas with an all-Black, all-female crew. From the pilots and flight attendants to cargo […]

Movie posters at the Academy Museum's Black Cinema exhibition. Mandalit del Barco/NPR News The Academy Museum in Los Angeles is celebrating key moments in Black cinema, from the 1890s until 1971. Its new exhibition, "Regeneration," includes a clip of Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Academy Award, as she gives her 1940 acceptance speech. Seven gallery spaces feature performances and costumes such as Lena Horne's gown and […]

Emily Meggett, the author of Gullah Geechee Home Cooking. Meggett published her cookbook at age 89. Clay Williams/Courtesy of Abrams Lots of home cooks would be excited to get a book deal. In the case of one home chef, she got that opportunity at the age of 89 years old. Emily Meggett is from the low country of South Carolina, and NPR traveled to her home on Edisto Island to […]

Photo credit: Sonya Smith As a young Black woman coming of age, Alora Young traced her life back through generations of Southern women. She's 19, and the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States. Her debut book Walking Gentry Home archives her family's history – and the legacy of slavery in the American South – in the form of a memoir in verse. Here's the very first poem […]