MY MOTHER INTRODUCED ME TO LANGSTON HUGHES the way I imagine many Black mothers have introduced Black sons to Langston Hughes for decades, if not a whole century: when I became a teenager, she made me read his poem “Mother to Son.” “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal […]
DeRay Mckesson is a frustrating figure. I don’t mean Mckesson the person, but rather Mckesson the persona, which is what you become once you have achieved his level of visibility. In the span of about four years, Mckesson, an educator and activist associated with Black Lives Matter, has gone from around eight hundred Twitter followers to more than a million. One of those followers is Beyoncé. To give a sense of how big of a deal this is, it must be noted that Beyoncé follows only ten accounts—and none of them belong to her husband, Jay-Z. Mckesson was photographed alongside
