Tracy Hopkins

According to an international travel study, African American travelers are more likely to visit destinations that promote diversity and inclusion in their marketing and that are deemed welcoming and safe.
“America’s history of slavery followed by repressive Jim Crow laws, segregation, institutional racism, and continuing police brutality has made Black [American] travelers cautious,” said Ursula Petula Barzey, research committee chair of Black Travel Alliance, in a press release.
“It’s why Vi...

Is a lavish trip to Dubai on your travel bucket list? After all, it is the sophisticated setting of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Dubai,” which features Kenyan fashion model Chanel Ayan and Jamaican-born, Miami-raised expat entrepreneur Lesa Milan – seemingly living their best lives in the United Arab Emirates’ cosmopolitan city.
But instead of a dream vacation destination, Dubai turned out to be a real-life nightmare for one African-American woman. In 2023, Tierra Young Allen, a social med...

“The sun looks good on you,” a Facebook friend commented under a glowing photo of me taken at Grace Bay Beach in the Turks and Caicos.
It’s not surprising that the beautiful backdrop of white sand and turquoise-blue waters was a highlight of my post-holiday season Caribbean getaway.
This was my second trip to Providenciales, the most developed and populated island in the Turks and Caicos, a group of islands south of the Bahamas. From interactions with some of the friendly staff members at the...

Winston-Salem is a Southern city that celebrates innovation but doesn’t forsake its history in order to do so. Urban farmer Samantha “Foxx” Winship’s agricultural journey in Winston-Salem is an example of entrepreneurial spirit rooted in a reverence for ancestry.
The former hairstylist moved back to her native North Carolina from the Midwest several years ago and decided to try her hand at beekeeping. In an interview with Our State magazine, Winship, now a certified beekeeper, says she was th...

The African American experience in Milwaukee can be defined by both resilience and racial inequities. Records show that African Americans were living in Milwaukee as early as the 1700s, and during a second wave of the Black migration from 1940 to 1970, Milwaukee’s Black population grew rapidly due to opportunities in industrial work.

Currently, African Americans account for nearly forty percent of Milwaukee’s population and are integral to the city’s socio-economic fabric. Milwaukee, however,...

Country music and the Grand Ole Opry is what springs to mind when it comes to Nashville and its melody maker scene. But did you know that the moniker “Music City ” was coined because of the post-Civil War popularity of a choir composed of Black college students known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers?
According to The Tennessean, the singing group put Nashville on the music map and broke racial barriers. With their rousing Negro spirituals, scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. says the group “introduced t...

Maurice Hines, a dazzling member of tap dance and Broadway royalty, died on December 29, 2023, two weeks after his 80th birthday.
If you were fortunate enough to meet the dapper dancer, actor, and singer—even if only briefly—Hines had a way of making you feel like you were a star in your own right. Family and friends echoed that sentiment on social media and at a private memorial service earlier this month in New Jersey.
“I was 21 and new to NYC when I met the legendary Maurice Hines,” wrote ...

Glaucoma was the last thing on my mind when I made my first appointment with an ophthalmologist. I was in my mid-30s and had good health insurance at the time, so I decided to add an eye exam to my annual healthcare routine. That’s when I learned that my eye pressure was slightly elevated (also known as ocular hypertension), and as a result I had borderline glaucoma. Thankfully, my ophthalmologist didn’t give me a reason to panic. She simply gave me samples of lubricant eye drops and said to ...

Per usual, we were rooting for everybody Black, and we enjoyed all of the “for the culture” highlights. The cast of Martin reunited, and longtime friends Tisha Campbell and Tichina Arnold are still fly girls; fresh-faced newcomer Ayo Edebiri won Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for The Bear; and Niecy Nash won for Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for her harrowing turn in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
The biggest thrill of the evening, however, was watchi...

Last year, while I was on a retail therapy run, I paused when I saw Bethann Hardison’s face emblazoned on a billboard for Victoria’s Secret. I first interviewed the pioneering model turned agent for another publication in 1997, and as I gazed at the confident image of this uniquely beautiful, brown-skinned sister with a short gray natural and her arms crossed in an embrace – I smiled and thought to myself, “There’s Bethann! She’s still doing her thing.”

As Black women, whether younger or olde...

In the ’90s, hip-hop spread its wings – geographically, culturally, academically, and politically.
by Tracy E. Hopkins
HOWARD IN THE HOUSE In the 1990s, hip-hop and Howard became highly intertwined.
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If you checked the rhymes booming from speakers whizzing by the Yard during the golden age of hip-hop, the eclectic mix included political rap, party anthems, New Jack Swing, Native Tongues vibes, Miami bass, Southern rap, and West Coast G-funk – flavor in your ear tha...

For Ananda Lewis (B.A. ’95), there was something magical about attending Howard in the 90s, especially when the G-funk sound of her hometown enveloped the campus.
“Well, being a Californian at Howard when [Dr. Dre’s] “The Chronic” [and] Snoop’s “Doggystyle” dropped, that was a whole other kind of experience. [Me and my friends] were like, what? That's [our] music. So [we] were very territorial about those albums,” recalls the Los Angeles native, who says her fingers were “stuck” in the “Wests...

If you grew up in the ’70s or ’80s, then watching Soul Train may have been a highlight of your Saturday TV lineup.

Created by velvet-voiced host Don Cornelius, the show was young Black America’s answer to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and one of the longest running shows in television history – broadcast nationally in syndication from 1971 to 2006.

Share in the comments below: What was your favorite back-in-the-day dance move? How about your favorite track? Your favorite dance party memory?...

When it comes to making New Year’s resolutions, joining a fitness center or renewing your gym membership is typically at the top of the list. On your quest to slim down and tone up you might also put your freshly pedicured foot forward by counting calories, cutting carbs and filling your fridge with whole foods and fresh lean cuisine.

But whether your goal is to drop that last five or ten pounds in order to reach a healthy BMI range (between 18.5 to 24.9) or you have a more significant amount...

When I was younger, my mother and I would take bagged-lunch bus trips from Baltimore to the Big Apple to see shows featuring African American performers. On two of these Broadway-bound excursions we were delighted by musical matinees starring smooth song and dance man, the late Gregory Hines, first in Sophisticated Ladies and then in Jelly’s Last Jam. Years later, after I moved to New York City, I saw the energetic Broadway production Hot Feet, directed and choreographed by Gregory’s older br...