The Jordans finally made it to Pemberton Place near downtown ATL to see the recently opened National Center for Civil and Human Rights, where we have a commemorative plaque, and where you can experience things like the sit-in counter (surreal), actual handwritten works from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and much more interactive and eye-opening history of Atlanta's part in the struggle for freedom and equality in America. Check the photos after the jump.

Last night I finally got a chance to attend the 38th-annual Atlanta Film Festival, a week-long event where  buzzy independent films, shorts and movie projects are screened at Atlanta's oldest operating cinema, the Plaza Theatre. I missed quite a few showings I really wanted to see (potty training a toddler makes your social life crappy in more ways than one), but catching the photo-documentary Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People made up for everything I didn't get to see. Here's why you too should see this really cool project when it comes to your town.

Did you see the eerie slideshow Gawker promoted this week of dead American mall White Flint's food court? The original post came from a blog called Duck Pie, and the author points out that back in the late '70s when it was new and pretty, this now-doomed shopping center in North Bethesda, MD, was a glamorous consumer paradise hosting black tie events that were attended by the likes of Donna Karan and Elizabeth Taylor. Right. That was the '70s.

My favorite hangout in Atlanta had its final day of business this past Sunday. Here are a few of the photos I took as lots of people gave P'cheen International Bistro & Pub a proper sendoff.

Warning: This is a loooong read. But it's worth considering. Are you mad at Macklemore?

An essay at Daily Kos is making the rounds on social media right now, with the author making a case that  Dr. King ended terrorism for black people in the south. While I agree with that, and I'm not really sure anybody could deny it, you could argue that what really made Dr. King's legacy possible was a very simple factor--he worked hard.

Big, big shout out to my man Donovan X. Ramsey who put me on to this new blog from some of my favorite members of the rising new black intelligentsia, including Cord Jefferson of Gawker, Issa Rae of Awkward Black Girl, and others. 

You can read more about it here, but definitely check out the blog -- there are some incredibly incredible photos on there that justify the name . I won't be able to join "You Ain't Got The Answers" Trivia Night tonight due to standing obligations, but I'm betting it's going to be particularly black, meaning awesome.

There is more than one scene in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave that's not easy to watch, but like many movies about some of humanity's most historically evil times, there's one that will stand out for most people. Without giving it away, I'll say that it's something that also happened in D'jango Unchained but not quite to the same degree, although I say that while taking nothing away from Quentin Tarantino's film.

People will immediately compare D'jango and 12, and for good reason. Both seem to be opposite sides of the same cursed coin minted from the blood/cotton money that is still owed to the descendants of slaves to this day. However, in one of these films, a character that is not based on any known historical figure kills almost every person involved in his bondage. In the other film, which is based on a true story (reportedly fact checked for historical accuracy by none other than Beer Summit attendee/Harvard professor/pseudo Obama friend Henry Louis "Skip" Gates), the hero receives no such satisfaction. No spoiler alert necessary--all one has to do is look up the story of Solomon Northup.

Photo Credit: Lisa Jack for Time

Today's POTUS press conference is below, pulled from The Blaze.

Thank you and much respect due to President Barack Obama for answering the call. May the national conversation continue until cultural understanding, tolerance, and respect are achieved. That probably means forever, but that just makes it ongoing change we can believe in.

Or actually, if we're going to use correct English, "change in which we can believe."

Hire me, Obama. You'll not only keep doing good things under my critical advisement, you'll also never have a grammatical error in a campaign slogan again, ever. Not that you're running for anything again anyway, but still, hire me anyway.  Just sayin'.