For those unfamiliar, the “paper-bag test” was a tactic used by certain African-American social organizations, fraternities and even churches to keep dark-skinned people out. The saying is that if you ...

The title of Nathaniel Donnett's exhibition at the Lawndale Art Center — Paper or Plastic? — is a question commonly heard in grocery-store lines. But while Donnett draws on brown paper sacks, the ...

A young San Francisco artist's exhibit at the Museum of African Diaspora explores the issues surrounding beauty and skin color within the Black community, and it does so using a medium that was once ...

UMaine graduate student Eleanor Kippling speaks about her installment of “The Brown Paper Bag Test.” Over the course of the semester so far, the art community has been the highlight of UMaine’s ...

The "paper bag test" was a once common discriminatory practice within the African-American community in which a brown paper bag was held up to someone's face to determine if they could get into ...

Some stories hide between the lines of our history, passed quietly from one generation to the next. Throughout much of the twentieth century, especially in the American South and within certain Black ...