Curated playlist
African-American cultural history
- Soul musicSoul music blended church gospel with dance-floor rhythm and blues. It began in African-American communities.
- Swing musicSwing music took off when young dancers rushed the floor at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935.
- JazzJazz got its name from a wobbly baseball pitch in 1912. A minor league pitcher described his "jazz ball" in print.
- Hip-hopHip-hop began at a back-to-school party in a Bronx recreation room.
- FunkJames Brown told his band to hit the first beat hardest. Funk began in African-American communities in the mid-1960s.
- Slavery in the United StatesThe words slave and slavery never appear in the U.S. Constitution.
- African-American cultureSlaveholders feared literacy, so oral tradition carried African-American history instead.
- Rhythm and bluesRhythm and blues was invented as a new name to replace "race music". Billboard's Jerry Wexler had it ready by 1948.
- Soul foodSoul food is the ethnic cuisine of African Americans, and one of its earliest appearances in print is in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965. The phrase itself was young. It took hold in the mid-1960s, when the word soul was…
- Yakub (Nation of Islam)Yakub, also spelled Yacub or Yaqub, is the central figure of a creation story told by the Nation of Islam. The Nation's doctrine describes him as a black scientist from Mecca who lived 6,600 years ago and engineered the white race. The…
- Hip-hop cultureThe name hip-hop began as a way to mock a friend who joined the Army.