Elise, 25, and AnDre, 28, met in 2011 when they were in high school together in San Antonio, Texas, where they still live today. Elise and AnDre have been together ever since. Their relationship was long-distance for years because AnDre went to college before Elise. They stayed together as Elise became an account executive at Texas Weddings and AnDre became a security officer. Because she works in the industry, it was important to Elise that her and AnDre's wedding felt like them instead of like every other wedding she'd ever been to or worked on.

Finding that the evidence for jumping the broom’s “origins” pointed to western Europe, I wanted to better understand how groups adopted and adapted rituals for their own communal needs, and what this suggested about its popularity in African American history. If the broomstick wedding was “forced” into enslaved communities, as some have claimed, how then is it remolded into something that many embraced over time? If it was accepted willingly in some circumstances, what does this suggest about agency and the evolution of Black culture in the antebellum era?

Americans send hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars a year through remittances so much that countries like the Philippines rely on these funds to stay solvent.

Vegas restaurant icon Lotus of Siam put Thai food in our city on the national map — one food critic called it the “bestThai food in North America,” and chef Saipin Chutima has won a James Beard award (which is basically the Grammys of food).

Javon Johnson is Assistant Professor and Director of African American and African Diaspora Studies with an appointment in Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. An acclaimed slam poet and recognized performance studies scholar, Dr. Johnson is the author of the book Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities. He is also co-editor of The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape, which collects poetry, lyrics, essays, and other media from youth artists in Chicago, and, most recently, published the book of poetry Ain’t Never Not Been Black.

On the final episode of season 2 of The Futures Archive, Rachel Lehrer and Lee Moreau explore pleasure with a conversation about the vibrator and women's control over their bodies. With additional insights from Lynn Comella, Ti Chang, Jenny Winfield, and Mireille Miller-Young.

This week, Ira spoke with Tyler D. Parry, author of Jumping The Broom, The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual. In this academic episode of Ira’s Everything Bagel, Tyler talks about the historical narratives vs memories of Jumping The Broom; viewing the tradition through the paradigm of resistance; the efforts of black writers to revisit the ritual; the unifying feature of jumping the broom; the importance of the community endorsing the marriage after the couple jumped the broom; the humanity of the ceremony itself; the revival of interest in the subject in the 60’s and 70’s; the booming heritage weddings industry in the 90 that featured it; the different groups around the world who utilized the ceremony; and the surprising results about the single origin point of the ritual.

The figure skater won a gold medal, but to many, she still had to prove she was American.

Comments from a Clark County judge during a probation hearing are drawing attention. Some are calling for her to resign, while others say there's more context to the judge's comments.

An interracial couple jumped the broom at their wedding and now Twitter is throwing stones. A couple named Jana and Marcus recently tied the knot and the photos from their ceremony have gone viral. Marcus, a Black man, is being heavily criticized for jumping the broom with his white bride, Jana.

“Asian Americans participate in sports broadly, everything from mainstream sports — basketball, football and baseball — to a variety of others, both team and individual,” says Stan Thangaraj, associate professor of anthropology, gender and international studies at the City College of New York. These athletes are finding new entry points into sports, he says, sometimes through their admiration of superstar mentors who share a similar heritage.

Twitter is currently abuzz with the conversation surrounding the tradition called Jumping the Broom, the meaning of which many are just learning. So let us explain to you its origin and significance here.