Welcome back to This Week in Black Twitter, your weekly digest of the happenings on Black Twitter and cultural conversations on the web. Topics will span the gamut — with pop culture, politics, sports, lifestyles and everything in between. This week: Users deem #BlackPantherSoLIT as casting details emerge, Malcolm X's birthday celebrated and Mississippi school ordered to desegregate.
1. Comic book lovers are freaking out about Marvel's "Black Panther" movie, starring the first black superhero, which is set to be released in 2018.
"Creed" star Michael B. Jordan and Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o will star alongside lead actor Chadwick Boseman in the film, which is directed by Ryan Coogler. Fans are hype to see black actors and creatives at the forefront of a major production in a time when there's a pressing need for diversity in Hollywood.
As Blavity writer Ira Hobbs put it: "We want to see people that look like us on the silver screen controlling the narrative, not relegated to a cheap stereotype like the sidekick, a one-dimensional love interest. ... This is the perfect character, with the perfect story, at the perfect time.
"Marvel's Black Panther in 2018 will be a celebration of Blackness in the package of a superhero film."
As casting details emerged, people tweeted their support and excitement for the highly anticipated film, using #BlackPantherSoLIT.
There will be dancing — lots of dancing.
Decisions, decisions.
Superman who?
2. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925. If the prominent black nationalist leader were alive today, he would have been 91 years old.
On Malcolm X's birthday, which some have argued should be a federal holiday like Martin Luther King Jr.'s, people took to Twitter to pay homage to the revolutionary activist who fought for black freedom.
3. Did you think segregated schools were a thing of the past? Well, think again.
Sixty-two years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, reports surfaced about a Mississippi school district being ordered to desegregate.
According to The Washington Post, the Cleveland, Miss., district is divided by railroad tracks, which separate white families one side from black families on the other.
Weekend Watch
A judge ordered the two high schools and two middle schools to consolidate, writing: "The delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education. Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden."
Some people were confused and shocked.
Clint Smith, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, created a thread on Twitter explaining the relationship between housing and school segregation.
Without neighborhood integration, he argued, schools will remain segregated.
I wonder if this little piece of history will be added to textbooks.