The poet, author, educator and public speaker Nikki Giovanni has died at 81.

A growing number of Black Americans see the struggle of Palestinians reflected in their own struggles for racial equality and civil rights.

Actor Joe Manganiello got some big surprises when researchers for the PBS show “Finding Your Roots” went digging through his family history.

As Jussie Smollett fights criminal charges that he lied to Chicago police about being the victim of an anti-gay, racist attack, his supporters are also working on a broader strategy: Ensuring the 39-year-old emerges from the scandal with his reputation and career intact, whatever the outcome of the trial.

ALLEGHANY COUNTY, Va. – It’s the third annual Flood Awareness Week in Virginia and our corner of the Commonwealth is no stranger to the risks from rising and rushing water. “Virginia has diverse terrain and flooding impacts all parts of the state in variable ways,” Angela Davis said. One of the most significant recent floods in our area happened in June 2016, when the western part of Alleghany County received eight to ten inches of rain in a 12-hour period. “It was a deluge of water that came into Alleghany County and the water levels jumped very fast,” Alleghany County Director of Public Safety Ryan Muterspaugh said. We met Muterspaugh at Humpback Bridge, which runs over Dunlap Creek in western Alleghany County, last month and he painted the picture of what he saw that day with his words.

In this Wednesday, June 17, 2020 photo Gunnar Dedio, German film producer and managing director of PROGRESS Film GmbH poses for a photo between rolls of film in the archive of PROGRESS Film, in Leipzig, Germany. A new project is underway to digitize thousands of East German newsreels, documentaries and feature films 30 years after Germanys reunification. The East German Augenzeuge, or Eyewitness, newsreel on the Kennedy visit trumpeted the prank as a triumph, scoffing that the American president got an “unexpected surprise instead of the great view into the East German capital promised by his Secret Service” and allegedly had to cut his visit from “20 minutes to five." Germany was divided into four occupation zones after World War II, the Soviet-influenced East Germany and West Germany's American, British and French sectors. In 1950, the year after East Germany was established as a country, the authorities formed another company, Progress, as a state monopoly to distribute DEFA films and to import foreign productions.

NEW YORK – Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams have teamed up to release a new song about Black ambition titled “Entrepreneur." “Black Twitter, what’s that? When Jack gets paid, do you?” raps Jay-Z, referring to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “For every one Gucci, support two FUBU’s.”On the track, Williams sings: “In this position with no choice/The system imprison young Black boys/Distract with white noise." Williams told TIME the song is “about how tough it is to be an entrepreneur in our country to begin with."