What Can Sankofa Teach Us?

The Popular African Symbol—Which Means ‘Return to Your Past’—Continues to Guide and Inspire the Black Diaspora

This essay publishes alongside tonight’s Zócalo and Destination Crenshaw event, “How Do You Grow a Rose From Concrete?” Click here to watch the full conversation.

Affixed on jewelry, tattoos, fabric, and home decor, and even in the pattern of wrought-iron fences in places like Washington, D.C., and Savannah, Georgia, is a heart-shaped symbol with curly circles at the top and bottom, almost like the mirroring of two S’s to make a heart.

It is one version of the popular Adinkra symbol Sankofa.

by Christel N. Temple | May 9, 2024

Tupac Was an Imperfect Prophet

A Contested Figure, the Rapper Championed a ‘Thug Life’ Meant to Liberate Black Americans

by Santi Elijah Holley | December 11, 2023

Hailed as a truth-teller and a champion of Black empowerment, disparaged as a hoodlum with a hot temper whose lyrics glorify violent behavior, the late rapper and actor Tupac Shakur …

A Black Neighborhood, Upended by a Highway, Looks to Reconnect

Communities of Color in St. Paul, and Across the Country, Are Making Efforts to Remember and Rebuild

by Ryan Reft | December 4, 2023

How do you remember—and reconnect—a neighborhood destroyed by highway construction over a half-century ago?

Since 1983, this has been the mission of Saint Paul, Minnesota’s annual Rondo Days festival. “[You see] …

In San Antonio, Remembering More Than the Alamo

Innovators Are Using Digital Tools to Tell Stories of the City’s Black and Latinx History

by William Deverell, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi | October 12, 2023

In San Antonio, Texas, one memorial—the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine of the Alamo—dominates the landscape. At the Alamo, the artifacts, images, and captions on display tell a unified story: That martyrs died there …

Heather McGhee Wins the 2022 Zócalo Book Prize

The Sum of Us Shows How Racism Costs Us All, and What Americans Can Do to Prosper Together

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | April 25, 2022

Heather McGhee, the former president of the think tank Demos and a scholar of economic and social policy, is the winner of the 2022 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for …

Is Black Veganism the Future of Soul Food?

What Animates the Cuisine Isn’t the Chicken or the Hog—It’s the Spirit of Preservation and Promotion of Black Identity

by Christopher Carter | January 31, 2022

Soul food is famously revered for pork and barbecue, for savory side dishes cooked in lard. I am a Black man who grew up loving my mother’s cornbread dressing and …

African American history