The Potty Mouth Granny

  • Soft Sheen: The Black-Owned Company That Helped Shape More Than Our Hair

    If you grew up in a Black household during the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, chances are Soft Sheen products lived somewhere in your home. Maybe it was a jar of Care Free Curl moisturizer sitting on the bathroom sink. A tub of Sportin’ Waves on your father’s dresser. A bottle of Let’s Jam keeping somebody’s…

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  • George E. Johnson Didn’t Just Sell Hair Products. He Sold Possibility.

    A living icon has become an ancestor and his name was George R. Johnson. Every now and then, somebody leaves this earth, and you realize they weren’t just successful.They changed the damn landscape.George E. Johnson was one of those people. He didn’t build Johnson Products because it was trendy. Hell, back then Black folks weren’t…

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  • Zina Garrison: The Trailblazer Who Helped Change Tennis

    When people talk about the history of Black women in tennis, the conversation often begins with Althea Gibson and then leaps straight to Venus and Serena Williams. But between those eras stood a remarkable athlete whose contributions deserve far more recognition: Zina Garrison. Born in Houston, Texas, November 16, 1963, Garrison fell in love with…

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  • Kenwood: Where Chicago’s History, Culture, and Grace Meet

    On Chicago’s South Side, nestled between Bronzeville and Hyde Park along the shores of Lake Michigan, sits one of the city’s most elegant and historically significant neighborhoods: Kenwood. It is a place where stately mansions stand beside vintage apartment buildings, where tree-lined streets invite long walks, and where nearly every block seems to whisper another…

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  • Whatever Happened to Honey Magazine? The Publication That Spoke to a Generation of Black Women

    There are magazines you read, and then there are magazines that become part of who you are. For me, Honey was the latter. Founded by Kierna Mayo and Joicelyn Dingle, Honey debuted with a preview issue in 1999 featuring Lauryn Hill. It blended fashion, beauty, music, politics, relationships, and culture through a distinctly Black feminist…

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  • If I Was Black and Male For A Day

    First of all, before I write this essay, I would like to state that I love being a Black woman. I love the beautiful brownness of my skin, my hair which is a crown that has anointed me Queen of my universe, my full lips, slanted eyes, and the strength of my ancestors who endured…

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  • Chatham: The Pride of the South Side

    When people talk about Chicago’s historic Black neighborhoods, places like Bronzeville and Hyde Park often dominate the conversation. Yet on the city’s South Side lies a community that has long represented stability, homeownership, education, and Black middle-class achievement: Chatham. Bounded roughly by 79th Street to the north, 87th Street to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue…

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  • Bronzeville: Where the Great Migration Learned to Breathe

    There are cities within cities. And then there’s Bronzeville— not just a neighborhood, but a testimony. To understand Bronzeville, you have to walk backward through time, into the long shadow of the Great Migration—that massive, sacred movement of Black folks who packed up their lives in the South and headed north with nothing but grit,…

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  • A Dedication to the Juke Joints of Chicago

    They don’t put you in the brochures,don’t line you up along the lakefrontlike polished teeth in a tourist smile—but baby, you are the heartbeat. You are where the city exhales. Down on the South Side,in rooms low-lit and thick with memory,where the floor knows more storiesthan any history book ever printed,you breathe. You hum.You testify.…

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  • We Were Never Meant to Be Silent: A Love Letter to Black Feminist Thought

    Let me tell you something plain—Black feminist theory didn’t come out of a classroom. It came out of kitchens with cracked linoleum floors. Out of bus stops in the cold. Out of women raising babies with one hand and holding themselves together with the other. It came from us. Before anybody gave it a name,…

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