When Pope Leo XIV emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as the new head of the Catholic Church on Thursday, the Rev. Lawrence Ndlovu of Johannesburg could not help but wonder at the shade of his skin. “‘You’re not the classical white sort of person,’” Father Ndlovu said he had been thinking while…
Kenneth Walker, an Emmy Award-winning journalist whose reporting for the ABC News program “Nightline” helped bring the brutality of South Africa’s racist apartheid system to the attention of the American public, propelling it onto the agenda of U.S. policymakers, died on April 11 in Washington. He was 73. His cousin and executor, Jeff Brown, said…
Clarence O. Smith, who convinced skeptical mainstream advertisers of the power and worth of the Black female consumer market as a founder of Essence, the first general-circulation magazine directed at Black women, died on April 21. He was 92. Mr. Smith, who lived in Yonkers, N.Y., died in a hospital after a short illness, his…
One of the nation’s most elite liberal arts schools, Amherst College has historically also been one of its most diverse. In 2023, federal data revealed that its overall Black enrollment, 11 percent of the student body, far outstripped many other similar institutions. So it was particularly jarring to the Amherst community last fall when data…
Before stepping foot on Howard University’s campus, Skylar Wilson knew she would see more women there than men. But just how many more stunned her: Howard, one of the most elite historically Black colleges and universities in the nation, is only 25 percent men — 19 percent Black men. “I was like, ‘Wow,’” said Ms….
To hear President Trump and some of his closest supporters tell it, South Africa is a terrible place for white people. They face discrimination, are sidelined from jobs and live under the constant threat of violence or having their land stolen by a corrupt, Black-led government that has left the country in disarray. The data…
L. Clifford Davis, a civil rights lawyer who led efforts to desegregate high schools in Texas, sometimes in the face of mob violence, hostility from state politicians and threats on his life, died on Feb. 15 in Fort Worth. He was 100. His daughter Karen Davis confirmed the death, in a nursing facility. Although the…
Late last fall at the Hugo Newman School in Harlem, two social studies teachers handed out pages of hip-hop lyrics to their seventh graders, and then flicked off the lights. The students appeared surprised. They had been studying ancient matriarchal societies, including Iroquois communities that had women leaders. Now, their teachers were about to play…
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. In 1949, as the chef Lena Richard stirred steaming pots of okra gumbo and shrimp bisque on live TV in New Orleans, viewers across the city — mostly white housewives and the…
Leah Barlow, a liberal studies professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, prepared to teach her Intro to African American Studies class this semester as she always does: She put together a syllabus, mapped out assignments and created a TikTok account to make the material as accessible as possible. She posted a video…