NEW YORK (AP) — The country has a new president and may well have a new literary star. In one of the inauguration’s most talked about moments, poet Amanda Gorman summoned images dire and triumphant Wednesday as she called out to the world “even as we grieved, we grew.” The 22-year-old Gorman referenced everything from […]
ATLANTA (AP) — Hank Aaron, who endured racist threats with stoic dignity during his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record and gracefully left his mark as one of baseball’s greatest all-around players, died Friday. He was 86. The Atlanta Braves, Aaron’s longtime team, said he died peacefully in his sleep. No cause was given. […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Cicely Tyson, the pioneering Black actor who gained an Oscar nomination for her role as the sharecropper’s wife in “Sounder,” won a Tony Award in 2013 at age 88 and touched TV viewers’ hearts in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” died Thursday at age 96. Tyson’s death was announced by […]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A new museum two decades in the making is telling the interconnected story of Black musical genres through the lens of American history. The National Museum of African American Music, which opened with a virtual ribbon-cutting on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is seated in the heart of Nashville’s musical tourism […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who stirred America at the inauguration of President Joe Biden last month, again commanded the spotlight on one of the country’s biggest stages, the Super Bowl. Gorman read an original poem Sunday during the pregame festivities in Tampa, Florida. The poem, titled “Chorus of the Captains,” […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Tyler Perry and Bill and Hillary Clinton were among the attendees of a private memorial service for Cicely Tyson at Harlem’s famed Abyssinian Baptist Church. Gospel singer Bebe Winans sang “Stand” — a request from Tyson before her death — and a letter was read by rocker Lenny Kravitz, who was […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Ta-Nehisi Coates, the acclaimed essayist and novelist who expanded the world of Wakanda for Marvel comics, will write the script for a new “Superman” film from Warner Bros. The studio announced Friday that Coates will pen the screenplay for an upcoming “Superman” film that’s early in development. J.J. Abrams will produce. […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Most playwrights who dip their toes into musical theater for the first time go small. Not Katori Hall: Her first assignment was to capture the life of a musical giant — Tina Turner. “I’m not really scared of much, which is probably why I felt like ‘Oh yeah, I’ll try this. […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Before a late night rehearsal in December, Terrence Floyd couldn’t remember the last time he squatted on a drum throne, sticks in hand and ready to perform. Surely, he said, it had not happened since his brother, George Floyd, died at the hands of police in Minneapolis last May, sparking a […]
NEW YORK (AP) — It wasn’t “You get a car!” but Oprah Winfrey gave TV executive Jesse Collins something equally, if not even more, cool: “You get to produce the Oscars!” Emmy-nominated Collins has had success over the years with the BET Awards, the Grammy Awards and various TV specials, and now he’s bringing his […]