Samuel L. Jackson, Jeffrey Wright, and David Oyelowo have all portrayed civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., whose Atlanta sit-ins, Montgomery bus boycotts, and peaceful protests desegregated the nation. When Kelvin Harrison Jr. was first offered the role, he was overwhelmed by the weight of the historical figure and …
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Although Colman Domingo’s spent three decades in the entertainment industry, with title roles in the theater, he says he’s been sidelined in film and television. He played a trombonist in Chadwick Boseman’s final film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; counselor to Zendaya’s troubled Rue in Euphoria; a violent, turn-on-a-dime pimp in …
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The 1963 March on Washington did not merely come together on its own via a whim, a wish, and good will. It took years of strategizing, planning, building coalitions, dodging bureaucratic obstacles and opponents both within and outside the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Students and veteran activists worked phone lines, …
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H e is the most prolific actor of his generation and his films have grossed close to $30 billion, making him one of the highest-grossing actors ever. He is Quentin Tarantino’s muse, and has worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg to Spike Lee and Paul Thomas Anderson. …
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Sidney Poitier walked among kings and earned Hollywood’s highest honors, but that didn’t stop the Federal Bureau of Investigation from keeping tabs on the actor and philanthropist via informants and surveillance tactics during the civil rights era, according to documents newly obtained by Rolling Stone. Poitier, who passed away at …
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Mere hours after LeBron James broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record, one held for decades by the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the two-part documentary Bill Russell: Legend debuted on Netflix. Directed by Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI), it’s a three-hour-plus survey of the life and career of the basketball legend, civil rights icon, …
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From 1967 to 2007, the Federal Bureau of Investigation methodically collected information about Aretha Franklin using false phone calls, surveillance, infiltration, and highly-placed sources, according to the documents obtained in September by Rolling Stone. Franklin’s FBI file — first requested in via the Freedom of Information Act on Aug. 17, …
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The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama — where Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair were murdered in a 1963 bombing before any of them got to see their 15th birthday — is a 10-minute drive from where I grew up. I don’t believe I …
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