A local gallery owner and Indiana Jones-type, Keith Barton, has just returned from six weeks of traveling through nine countries in West and North Africa, searching for elusive ethnographic treasures.

The blaxploitation films of the Seventies became bywords for crass stereotyping. But a new book argues that the movies were essential in highlighting African-American issues. Ian Burrell reports ...

The Normal Theater is partnering with ISU to present a film series: Can You Dig It? Exploring Race, Representation, and Culture in Blaxploitation Films.

Can you dig it? Audiences will decide when the film arrives in theaters June 14. ... Indeed, in 1971 black lead roles were scarce in the movies — and most of them seemed to go to Sidney Poitier.

Benjamin “Yellow Benjy” Melendez and the Ghetto Brothers brokered a truce among 50 gangs that led to safer streets, a flourishing of public art and, ultimately, the birth of hip-hop.