18 Celebrities On Their HBCU Days

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What do Lionel Richie, Spike Lee, and Sean “Diddy” Combs have in common? All three entertainment icons are Oscar winners (check out Diddy’s 2011 documentary, Undefeated), and all three started out as undergrads at historically black colleges or universities.

HBCUs, as they’re commonly known, are rich in black history and seminaries for future stars. Empire’s Taraji P. Henson, Black-ish’s Anthony Anderson, and The Game’s Wendy Raquel Robinson were classmates in Howard University’s drama department, where legendary actors like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee served as mentors.

BuzzFeed News asked some of the most talented and successful people in the entertainment industry why an HBCU was the only choice for them, and heard the campus stories that set the course for their storied careers.

Sean "Diddy" Combs
Rapper, producer, actor, mogul, inventor of the remix
Howard University

It was important for me to go to a school where I would be exposed to new things, and meet new people. But I also wanted to be part of a community that understood my life experience. Howard offered all of that, and more.

I still remember my first day at Howard. I walked up the hill, past the Quad, through the main gate. I made my way to the Yard and my mind was blown! Growing up, I rarely traveled outside of New York. I had never heard so many different accents. I had never seen so many different types of people.

It was my Howard professors who supported my decision to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and work at Uptown MCA Records under the legendary Andre Harrell. The lessons I learned while on campus, and the connections that I made, are part of my life and career every day.

And Howard became my family. It gave me a second home. When I couldn’t afford a place to live, it was my Howard friends who let me sleep on their floors. It was my Howard family who looked out for me when I didn’t have any money for food. When I started my career in music, many of the people I met at Howard — like Harve Pierre — came with me on my journey.

Anthony Anderson
Actor (Black-ish, The Departed)
Howard University

Howard University was the only college I applied to, because of the history of their fine arts department. The likes of Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad and Roberta Flack had come through those doors.

I go back and I meet students and I go to homecoming. I talk about how great it is, and I’m like, well, you know, there was never really a better time at Howard than when I was there.

I understand that every generation has their time, or whatnot, but we had Puff, we had Ananda Lewis we had AJ Calloway, we had myself, Wendy Raquel Robinson, we had Wendy Davis, we had Carl Anthony Payne, we had Marlon Wayans, we had the group Shai — Taraji P. Henson! And I say, "You look at all the people that I have named, and how we've become successful in our own fields, in our own right. Just imagine all of that creative energy on the yard at the same time. The hype that you're feeling right now isn't the same as what it was once when we were students there."

And then they understand, they say, "OK, you may have a point. You may have a point. But, you know, Howard’s fly as hell right now."

David Banner
Rapper, producer (Lil Wayne), and actor (The Butler)
Southern University

I never planned on being Student Government Association president. Two things that I don't trust are preachers and politicians. Both of those positions are designed for regular people to rise to the occasion. As soon as you get done with it, you go back to being a butcher or whatever you were in society. I don't like that you now have professional preachers and professional politicians. Whenever you have a constituency that pays you, you can never be for the people.

But being Southern’s SGA president taught me something. It showed me that you can do something right. That was the first time in my life that I did something all the way right and didn't cut any corners, taking advantage of the position. I didn't take no money, I actually wasn’t even sexually active with any woman on campus while I was SGA president. (I did go over to Louisiana State University, though!) I didn't want anything. I worked every day for eight hours a day in the office. It gave me a microcosm of what my life was going to be, because I was a star on that campus, for the most part.

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Wanda Sykes
Actor and comedian (The Wanda Sykes Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Hampton University

My brother went to Norfolk State, my father went to Virginia State. I knew I wanted to go to a historically black college, and so I said, "You know, I should go to the best, the real HU!" Though at that time it was the Hampton Institute.

My aunt Dolores, she was teaching there, so I was familiar with the school. I was going away to college, but I was still in familiar territory.

Really, I was just like, OK, I have to go to college. I should make it as fun as possible!

Loni Love
Actor and comedian (co-host, The Real)
Prairie View A&M

I spent like a half a semester at Western Michigan University, and I just felt lost. I didn't understand college because nobody in my family had gone to college. I just didn't understand the whole process. I felt alone. I was in a room with a whole bunch of people that didn’t look like me, and being a girl from the projects, that was a culture shock. Everybody around me was not African-American.

I ended up getting a job at General Motors — I had a friend who was an engineer and he said, "Well, why don't you try a historically black college?" I didn't know anything about it. I ended up finding a college that graduated the most engineers, and that happened to be Prairie View A&M University.

I was broke, so I was up in a bar one night and they were like, "Well, whoever can tell the best story will get 50 bucks." I needed the 50 bucks and I got up and I just told a story, just made it up, and that's what made me realize people get paid to tell stories. I kind of always said that was my introduction into stand-up.

I became a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and I did a sorority event called "The Wanda Winfrey Show." Oprah Winfrey was just starting to ramp up, and I played her sister, Wanda. My talk show addressed the issues that affected the campus; it really became a hit.

Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images

Stephen A. Smith
Sports journalist and television personality (ESPN2’s First Take)
Winston-Salem State University

I was in a critical persuasive writing class, and the professor for the class was the editorial page editor for the Winston-Salem Journal. He read an essay of mine and said, "You are a natural born sports writer. Let's go out to lunch." He took me straight to the Winston-Salem Journal and introduced me to the sports editor, who hired me on the spot as a clerk.

My career just essentially went from there. The guys that I worked with on the copydesk were all white, and they were absolutely fantastic to me. They treated me like family and literally taught me the business: how to write, how to go about pursuing a story.

One day the sports editor, Terry Oberle, asked me to write a feature about Wake Forest soccer, which was ranked No. 3 in the nation. I had never watched a game of soccer in my life. I walked up to the coach and I said to him, "I know nothing about soccer whatsoever, but I want to be a sports writer. Is there anything you can do to help me?" ... He called the whole team over, and he said, "Give him complete, unadulterated access to the next three days. Whatever he wants, give it to him." The coach taught me the game of soccer … over the next three days. I wrote a two-page feature and the sports desk ran it in the Sunday paper. Terry called me into his office that Monday and said, "Congratulations, you're the new lead writer for the Wake Forest soccer team."

DJ Premier
DJ and producer (Gang Starr, Nas, Jay Z, Notorious B.I.G.)
Prairie View A&M

My dad was a biology professor on campus and a dean, so I was always at Prairie View A&M. I was actually doing parties on campus before I started going to Prairie View. And I had all the latest records. People would be like, "Man, he has everything." We didn’t have CDs back then. There was no such thing. It was all vinyl.

We did big parties at the Newman Center — it’s not there anymore. That started to transcend to step shows. Back then, they were called stomp shows. One thing led to another and all of the sudden the Kappas are calling me to do a party, the Ques are calling me to do a party, the Alphas are calling me to do a party, AKAs are calling me to do a party, the Sigma Gamma Rhos are calling me to do a party, the Wisconsin Sleepers are calling me to do a party. It just kept going.

The stuff you see in Drumline with the bands playing all the funky stuff and doing all the ill drum patterns, Prairie View has been doing that, even back when I was in junior high. As a kid, it was amazing to see a black marching band get down. It was normal to see that, and I felt like there was no other place to go but Prairie View.

My dad said he wanted to see us be as on point as any other race. He wanted us to be at a high level. That was always the Prairie View motto: producing productive people. That carried into me being a producer and a businessman. I didn't graduate because I stepped out to see if I could get my music career off the ground. It was totally my instincts and my belief in myself that made me say, if I get a shot at it, I’m going to go do it.

Jason Merritt / Getty

Lionel Richie
Legendary top-selling soul singer, songwriter, and musician; father of Nicole
Tuskegee University

I was born and raised on Tuskegee University’s campus. It was probably one of the greatest things that ever happened to me in my life. All of the things that black America stands for today were actually built into my growing up. It was a part of the lesson plan.

It was one of the greatest decisions I ever made to return to Tuskegee and attend the university. Going to that school gave me the confidence of basically knowing who I am and where I am in this great big world that we live in.

I think the part that I loved the most was who came through Tuskegee at that time. We had some of the greatest leaders and controversial subjects of our time. From Malcolm X to Martin Luther King to H. Rap Brown to Stokely Carmichael to Odetta to Hugh Masekela, the Temptations to James Brown and every other wonderful artist. It was just a cultural mecca. I should say James Baldwin! Dick Gregory.

It was just one of those wonderful times in history when everyone would come through. Not to mention the fact that I was born and raised in and around the Tuskegee Airmen. The community and the environment — it just raised me. It raised me to who I am today.

Rickey Smiley
Comedian (The Rickey Smiley Show, Dish Nation, Rickey Smiley for Real)
Alabama State University

You go to a black college, you're really going to learn a lot about your culture. You're going to have an appreciation for the people that came before you because those professors are not going to let you forget what you came from. At some schools you might be just a number, but I know at Alabama State, and different HBCUs, teachers know you by name, and you have a relationship with these teachers.

I absolutely love Alabama State. But I love Alabama A&M as well, even though Alabama A&M is our main competition, because A&M was the first college to put me up on stage and pay me to perform.

They would book me for homecoming. I would jump in my '77 Cutlass and drive over to Huntsville with some friends. I remember my first check. I got maybe $400. I'll never forget it. That was a lot — that was like four grand now. Talking about '89, '90, $400 is like four grand. You can do a lot with that!

When I couldn’t afford a place to live, it was my Howard friends who let me sleep on their floors. — Diddy

Wendy Raquel Robinson
Actor (The Steve Harvey Show, The Game)
Howard

There was a college counselor who came to my high school and was recruiting for several schools. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him that I wanted to act. I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing. And he was like, "Who is your favorite artist?" Right off the top of my head was Debbie Allen. And he was like, "Debbie Allen went to Howard. Have you ever heard about Howard?" And I had never even heard of Howard University, but I knew who Debbie was and she was always — she was, and still is — my role model. I put all my effort into going there.

At Howard, there was a passion for what we were doing. We didn't have all of the bells and the whistles and the state-of-the-art technology. We were forced to really, like, hang that lighting instrument with a shoestring and some bubblegum and just make the best of it. When you don't have everything, you have to work even harder and you appreciate it.

The class sizes were so small. That's one thing that I love about HBCUs. You're not just a number. You are a person. You're individualized, you're not a number in this massive roll call of students that are on campus. We all had relationships with our professors, in addition to each other. We knew our professors.

Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images

Spike Lee
Director (School Daze, Do the Right Thing, three Denzel Washington films in the '90s)
Morehouse College

My father went to Morehouse, my grandfather went to Morehouse, my mother went to Spelman, and my grandmother went to Spelman. I took a class at Clark with my film professor Dr. Eichelberger, who is still there teaching at Clark AU. He's the one that really said that I should try to pursue filmmaking.

School Daze, very simply, is my four years at Morehouse and the impact of the homecoming weekend. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I remember the man directing the coronation my senior year and that was a big success that left me with confidence. Those coronations at Morehouse, they're like Broadway productions!

Not just Morehouse, but I think black colleges are very essential to our education of young black minds. Being black in this country is never going to get old. There's an understanding, a nurturing at HBCUs, that you might not get elsewhere.

Kenya Barris
Showrunner and screenwriter (Black-ish)
Clark Atlanta University

I picked Clark Atlanta University because of Spike Lee. Lee actually went to Morehouse, but his mentor was a guy named Dr. Eichelberger who was a teacher at Clark. Morehouse doesn't have a film program, so kids would come over there. I'm basically doing what I'm doing because of Spike Lee. I think — for a lot of people my age — he was the first time I saw a dude do something that felt like he had a voice that I could relate to, but at the same time, crossed over and spoke to a lot of other different people. It felt like a genuine voice, and when he did School Daze and showed black colleges, I was like, oh my god, I want that experience. I’m from L.A., and coming from here, we had nothing like that.

LaTanya Richardson Jackson
Tony-nominated actor (A Raisin in the Sun, Sleepless in Seattle), met husband Samuel L. Jackson, a Morehouse alum, in college
Spelman College

I think Spelman chose me. I’m from Atlanta, and I knew I was going to be a theater major. One of my schoolteachers — Georgia Allen, she was a great actress — put on children’s theater at Spelman, so I was always in something. When applications came for colleges, Dr. Baldwin Burroughs, who was the head of the drama department there, said, "You filled out your application?" And I said, "Oh, do I have to? I’m here!" "No, you still have to apply."

I was in school in '68 into the '70s. We were part of a very political faction, the post–civil rights generation. I was very conscious thanks to people who graduated from the school — like Marian Wright, who is my mentor and dear friend. But what was my responsibility, and what we considered part of a contract that you sort of have with Spelman, as a graduate, was that I would choose to change the world and want to do something about it. It was a very rich experience for me, one that I don’t think I could have had on any other campus, because I saw every day that I went there who was in charge of me — and they were African-Americans.

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How Well Do You Know "American Pie"?

This one time…

How To Be A Genderqueer Feminist

Charlotte Gomez / BuzzFeed

I've never felt quite like a woman, but I've never wanted to be a man, either. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be something in between. To quote Ruby Rose: I called myself a girl, but only because my options were limited. I always assumed that everyone felt that way.

I discovered my mistake one day in junior school, when a few of the girls in my class were chatting about what boys they fancied. I wasn’t often invited to participate in these sorts of secret female chats. Even back then, there was something odd about me, a strangeness that was partly about identity but also about the fact that I wore shapeless black smocks, rarely brushed my hair, and tended to jump when anyone spoke to me.

I couldn’t think of anything to say that would be both interesting and true. So I mentioned that I often felt like I was a gay boy in a girl’s body. Just like everyone else, right?

I could tell from their faces that this was not right. It was very, very wrong.

This was a time before Tumblr, when very few teenagers were talking about being genderqueer or transmasculine. The women I'd heard of who were allowed to dress and talk and behave like boys were all lesbians. I often wished I was a lesbian. But I almost always fancied boys, and if you fancied boys, you had to behave like a girl. And behaving like a girl was the one subject, apart from sports, that I always failed.

It was around this time that I first read second-wave feminist Germaine Greer. She seemed to explain fundamental truths that every other adult in my small universe of school, home, and the library seemed equally anxious to ignore, and it helped that there were also dirty jokes. I clung to The Female Eunuch with the zeal of a convert and the obsession of a prepubescent nerd. I wrote Greer a letter with my very favorite pens and almost imploded with excitement when she wrote back, on a postcard that had koalas on it. I resolved right then and there that one day I would be a feminist and a writer just like her.

According to Greer, liberation meant understanding that whatever you were in life, you were a woman first. Her writing helped me understand how society saw me — and every other female person I'd ever met. We were not human beings first: We were just girls. Looking back, though, that militant insistence on womanhood before everything is part of the reason it’s taken me a decade to admit that, in addition to being a feminist, I’m genderqueer. That I’m here to fight for women’s rights, that I play for the girls' team, but I have never felt like much of a woman at all.

I grew up on second-wave feminism, but that didn't stop me starving myself.

I was anorexic for large parts of my childhood and for many complex, painful, altogether common reasons, of which gender dysphoria was just one. I felt trapped by the femaleness of my body, by my growing breasts and curves. Not eating made my periods stop. It made my breasts disappear. On the downside, it also turned me into a manic, suicidal mess, forced me to drop out of school, and traumatized my entire family.

At 17, I wound up in the hospital, in an acute eating disorders ward, where I stayed for six months.

The window in my hospital room did not open more than a crack. Just wide enough to sniff a ration of fresh air before I got weighed in the morning. I turned up with all my curves starved away, with my hair cropped close to the bones of my skull, androgynous as a skeleton, insisting that people call me not Laura, but Laurie — a boy’s name in England. I was too unwell to be pleased that I finally looked as genderless as I felt. At that point, I just wanted to die. Mostly of shame.

Long story short: I didn’t die. I got better. But not before I let some well-meaning medical professionals bully me back onto the right side of the gender binary.

Psychiatric orthodoxy tends to lag behind social norms, and doctors are very busy people. So it’s not their fault that, less than 20 years after homosexuality was removed from the official list of mental disorders, the doctors treating me took one look at my short hair and baggy clothes and feminist posters and decided that I was a repressed homosexual and coming out as gay would magically make me start eating again.

Like I said, they were trying.

There was only one problem. I wasn't gay. I was sure about that. I was bisexual, and I was very much hoping that one day when I wasn't quite so weird and sad I'd be able to test the theory in practice. It took a long time to persuade the doctors of that. I can’t remember how, and I'm not sure I want to. I think diagrams may have been involved. It was a very dark time.

I was too unwell to enjoy looking as genderless as I felt.

Anyway. Eventually they gave up trying to make me come out and decided to make me go back in. If you weren’t a lesbian, the route to good mental health was to "accept your femininity." You needed to grow your hair and wear dresses and stop being so angry all the time. You needed to accept the gender and sex you had been assigned, along with all the unspoken rules of behavior involved. You needed to get a steady boyfriend and smile nicely and work hard. I repeat: These people didn’t mean to do me or anyone else lasting psychological damage. Just like every other institution through the centuries that has tried to force queer and deviant people to be normal for their own good, they truly were trying to help.

For five years, I struggled to recover. I tried hard to be a good girl. I tried to stick to the dresses, the makeup, the not being quite so strange and cross and curious all the time. For five years, I shoved my queerness deep, deep down into a private, frightened place where it only emerged in exceptional circumstances, like a bottle of cheap vodka, or a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or both. But being a good girl didn’t work out very well, so I cut the difference, cut my hair short, and went back to being an angry feminist.

And feminism saved my life. I got better. I wrote, and I had adventures, and I returned to politics, and I made friends. I left the trauma of the hospital far behind me and tried to cover up my past with skirts and makeup.

Today, I’m a feminist and a writer, but I no longer valorize Germaine Greer so blindly. For one thing, Greer is one of many feminists, some of them well-respected, who believe transgender people are dangerous to the movement. Their argument is pretty simple. It boils down to the idea that trans people reinforce binary thinking about gender when they choose to join the other team instead of challenging what it means to be a man or a woman. Greer has called trans women a "ghastly parody" of femaleness.

Greer’s comments about trans women exemplify the generational strife between second-wave feminists who sought to expand the definition of “woman” and the younger feminists who are looking for new gender categories altogether. This tension has been cruel to trans women, who have been cast as men trying to infiltrate women’s spaces. But it’s alienating to all corners of the LGBT community.

By the time I was well enough to consider swapping the skirts for cargo pants, changing my pronouns and the way I walked through the world, I’d become well-known as, among other things, a feminist writer.

At 24, I wrote columns about abortion rights and sexual liberation, and books about how to live and love under capitalist patriarchy. In response, young women wrote to me on a regular basis telling me that my work helped inspire them to live more freely in their femaleness. They admired me because I was a "strong woman." Would I be betraying those girls if I admitted that half the time, I didn't feel like a woman at all?

So I hoarded up my excuses for not coming out. I carefully described myself as "a person with cis privilege" rather than "a cis person" when the conversation came up. I decided that the daily emotional overheads of being a feminist writer on the internet were enough for now.

And I waited.

Over the past few years, more and more of my friends and comrades have come out as trans. I’ve been privileged to be part of a strong and supportive queer community, and it has helped that a great many of my close friends are both trans and feminist. For them, there doesn't seem to be a problem with fighting for gender equality while fighting transphobia — which sometimes, sadly, means that they’re also fighting feminists.

Many of the critiques of trans politics from feminists through the decades have been openly bigoted, the sort of self-justifying theories that let people feel OK about driving other, more vulnerable people out of their jobs, outing them to their families and welfare advisers, and putting them in danger.

Buried under the bullshit, though, are some reasonable critiques. One is that people who claim a trans identity are only doing so because gender roles are so restrictive and oppressive in the first place. Sadly, many trans people are forced to play into tired gender stereotypes in order to "prove" their identity to everyone from strangers to medical gatekeepers — not long ago, one friend of mine was queried at a gender clinic because she showed up to her appointment in baggy jeans, which was evidence of her "lack of commitment" to life as a woman. I repeat: Even trousers are political.

I regret that there wasn't more language, dialogue, and support for trans and genderqueer kids when I was a teenager and needed it most. I regret that by the time I had found that community and that language, I was too traumatized by hospital, by prejudice, and by the daily pressures of living and working in a frenzied, wearily misogynist media landscape to take advantage of the freedoms on offer. I regret the fear that kept me from coming out for so many years.

Would I betray the girls who looked up to me if I admitted that I didn't feel like a woman at all?

When I say I regret those things, I mean that I try not to think about them too much, because the knowledge of how different things could have been if I’d known as a teenager that I wasn’t alone, the thought of how else I might have lived and loved and dated if I’d had the words and the community I have now just a little sooner, opens cold fingers of longing somewhere in my stomach and squeezes tight. But when they let go, I'm also glad.

The journey I took as I came to terms with my own identity — the journey that will continue as long as I live — all of that has led me to where I am now.

More than anything, I'm excited. I'm excited to see how life is going to be different for the queer, trans, and even cis kids too, growing up in a world that has more language for gender variance. I'm excited to find out what sort of lives they will lead, from the genderqueer activists in the audience at my last reading to the barista with the orange mohawk who handed me the cup of tea I'm clutching for dear life as I write alone in this café, trying to believe that writing this piece is something other than gross self-indulgence.

The barista is wearing two name badges. One says their name; the other one says, in thick chalk capitals, I am not a girl. My pronouns are They/Them.

So here it is. I consider "woman" to be a made-up category, an intangible, constantly changing idea with as many different definitions as there are cultures on Earth. You could say the same thing about "justice" or "money" or "democracy" — these are made-up ideas, stories we tell ourselves about the shape of our lives, and yet they are ideas with enormous real-world consequences. Saying that gender is fluid doesn't mean that we have to ignore sexism. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Of course gender norms play into the trans experience. How can they not? But being trans or genderqueer, even for cis-passing people like me, is not about playing into those norms. It’s about about throwing them out. Some "radical" feminists argue that trans and genderqueer people actually shore up the gender binary by seeking to cross or straddle it rather than setting it on fire. To which I'd say: It is also possible to jump over a burning building.

In fact, watch me.

Only when we recognize that "manhood" and "womanhood" are made-up categories, invented to control human beings and violently imposed, can we truly understand the nature of sexism, of misogyny, of the way we are all worked over by gender in the end.

Coming out is an individual journey, but it is a collective weapon. Questioning gender — whether that means straddling the gender binary, crossing it, or breaking down its assumptions wherever you happen to stand — is an essential part of the feminism that has sustained me through two decades of personal and political struggle. In the end, feminists and the LGBT community have this in common: We’re all gender traitors. We have broken the rules of good behavior assigned to us at birth, and we have all suffered for it.

But here's one big way I differ from a lot of my genderqueer friends: I still identify, politically, as a woman. My identity is more complex than simply female or male, but as long as women’s reproductive freedom is under assault, sex is also a political category, and politically, I'm still on the girls' team.

I don't think that everyone who was dumped into the "female" category at birth has a duty to identify as a woman, politically or otherwise. Because identity policing, if you’ll indulge me in a moment of high theoretical language, is fucked up and bullshit. This is just how it happens to work for me.

We're all gender traitors.

In a perfect world, perhaps I'd be telling a different story. I’m never going to be able to say for sure whether in that perfect world, that world without sexism and gender oppression, that world without violence or abuse, where kittens dance on rainbows and nobody has ever heard of Donald Trump, I would feel the need to call myself genderqueer. My hunch is that I would; and all I've got for you is that hunch, along with a stack of feminist theory books and a pretty nice collection of flat caps.

I am a woman, politically, because that's how people see me and that's how the state treats me. And sometimes I’m also a boy. Gender is something I perform, when I put on my binder or paint my nails. When I walk down the street. When I talk to my boss. When I kiss my partner in their makeup and high heels.

I don’t want to see a world without gender. I want to see a world where gender is not oppressive or enforced, where there are as many ways to express and perform and relate to your own identity as there are people on Earth. I want a world where gender is not painful, but joyful.

But until then, we’ve got this one. And for as long as we all have to navigate a gender binary that’s fundamentally broken and a sex class system that seeks to break us, I’m happy to be a gender traitor.

I’m a genderqueer woman, and a feminist. My preferred pronouns are "she" or "they." I believe we’re on our way to a better world. And you can call me Laurie.

The "Today" Show's "Peanuts" Costumes Will Scare The Crap Out Of You

Good grief.

Everyone who had a childhood knows the Peanuts gang is absolutely adorable. Seriously, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and friends are like the original #SquadGoals.

Universal Uclick / Via huffingtonpost.com

So Peanuts would make for an excellent Halloween costume theme, right? Loveable cartoon characters? Awesome! So that's why the Today show cast decided to rock costumes inspired by the cartoon on this morning's broadcast.

Cindy Ord / Getty Images

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13 People They Should Cast In The New All-Female "Ocean's Eleven"

Sandra Bullock is reportedly starring in an all-female reboot of Ocean’s Eleven directed by The Hunger Games’ Gary Ross. Here’s our vision for the cast.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Warner Bros.

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Here Is "Hey Arnold" As An Actual "Football Head"

“Move it football head!”

"Look I'm a football head!"

Jim Rogash / Getty Images / Nickelodeon / Loryn Brantz

"Who's laughing now?'

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images / Nickelodeon / Loryn Brantz

"Ack got me."

Norm Hall / Getty Images / Nickelodeon / Loryn Brantz

"Move it football...player!"

Jim Rogash / Getty Images / Nickelodeon / Loryn Brantz

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How Well Do You Remember The Slapsgiving Song From "HIMYM"?

Happy Slapsgiving, Everyone!

CBS

15 Songs You Loved (But Forgot About) From 10 Years Ago

Remember Howie Day lol?

"Listen To Your Heart" by D.H.T.

Why this song spoke to you: Remember puberty? Remember longingly staring out of your bedroom window pretending to be sad? This song went hand in hand with both of those.

"Just The Girl" by The Click 5

Why this song spoke to you: Backstreet Boys + All-American Rejects + funny hair = The Click 5. They were like the perfect mix of everything you cared about in 2005.

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Cooking My Grandmother's Recipes Helps Me Learn Who I Am

I don't remember the first time I ate curry goat, but I remember the last. It was at some sort of special occasion, lined up alongside the various other delicious Caribbean dishes on display. As is customary at every christening, wedding, and funeral, I waited in line to be served the food on a paper plate, ate it with a plastic fork, and minutes later, found the inevitable yellow curry stain from where I’d unknowingly dropped it on myself. It is the food that reminds me of my great-grandmother’s funeral in Jamaica, where I watched members of the community chop up the goat that would later be used to feed guests. It reminds me of the way my grandmother eats, placing a piece of meat in her mouth and, after a few short chews, retrieving the bone completely clean. I’ve always wondered how she did that – and why I never could.

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Curry goat is a rare treat in my household. It takes time, patience, and a particularly Jamaican sense of self-assurance: three things that life as a Londoner seldom permits, so my mum didn’t cook it often. But when she did, she’d throw every seasoning she could into the Dutch pot, stirring the goat quickly and confidently, and somehow managing to keep several other pots of food cooking at the same time. When I watched my mum cook I could tell she was brought up in Jamaica – and it was only when I tried to emulate her that I realised how clear it was that I wasn't. In my mother’s kitchen, there are no scales, no measurements, and no mistakes. She cooks everything from memory, and every time it’s a little different, a far cry from my strictly regimented method of cooking.

“OK, so how much of the curry powder do I put in?” I asked once.

“Yuh jus' haf fi use yuh eye,” she told me.

Patois is the language my mum usually speaks in the kitchen. It always reminds me of my grandmother.

“You will know,” she added.

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I began by placing the washed goat meat into a bowl. I seasoned it with thyme, spring onion, a scotch bonnet pepper, and a small bag of seasoning that my mum described as having “everything in it”. After leaving it to marinate for an hour, I heated some oil, garlic, and curry powder, then added the goat meat. Turning the meat with confidence borrowed from my mother, I made sure it was entirely covered, then put the lid on the pot to allow it to cook, returning to stir every 10 minutes. Once the juices started to reduce, I added a cup of water, more seasoning, and lowered the heat, leaving the goat to tenderise. In an hour and a half, my dish was complete.

"Curry goat takes time, patience, and a particularly Jamaican sense of self-assurance."

Cooking curry goat for the first time, with only gut instinct as my guide, reminded me of watching my mum and grandmother cook: the very specific alchemy of sprinkling powders and liquids over a steaming pot. I started off reciting my mother’s instructions in my head, but as time went on, I found myself improvising, fluid with the knowledge covertly embedded over the years. I remembered the satisfying sizzle of the meat hitting the hot oil. I recognised the potent smell of curry so characteristic of my grandparents’ house. It was my first time, but it felt far from foreign.

I have plenty of opportunities to forget about my heritage in my daily life, always painfully aware that I may be too English. When I was younger, my grandma would quiz me on the kinds of foods I liked, a test of my "authenticity". If ever I showed any appreciation for a Jamaican food, she would offer a satisfied smile that seemed to say: “At least – at the very least – she’s Jamaican enough to appreciate the food.” Every time I eat curry goat I assume she’d be satisfied to know that I haven’t abandoned tradition completely. When I eat it, I feel truly Jamaican.

Every Jamaican should know how to cook curry goat. Or, at least, that’s what I think my grandma would say.

– Gena-mour Barrett

"More important than egg timers, measuring cups, and scales are fresh ingredients, patience and, above all, a carefree attitude."

My grandma learned how to make rice and peas from her own grandma, growing up in Comfort Castle in Portland, Jamaica. When she moved to England about 50 years ago, her traditional Jamaican cooking skills came with her. Her rice and peas is by far the favourite among all her dishes, praised by everyone who has eaten it. And so many have.

My grandma’s rice and peas reminds me of her early on a Sunday morning. I wake up and hear her singing along to hymns on the radio and the slightly stuffy scent of red peas boiling. She likes to leave the peas to boil for a few hours while she gets dressed for church. The smell drifts from the kitchen and through the tiny opening of my bedroom door. Like clockwork, when she gets back from church she boils the peas in coconut milk, with onions, thyme and black pepper, before adding the rice and a little bit of margarine.

When my grandma taught me how to make it, it felt like an honour. She instructed me to use tinned coconut milk and tinned peas, because they’re quicker and easier, but she makes her own coconut milk – cracking a coconut open with any hard thing she can find, scraping out the insides with a sharp knife, grating it, and squeezing it with her hands. She doesn’t have to do it this way, she told me, but she enjoys the lengthy process.

Laura Gallant / BuzzFeed

I love watching her cook. I love the way her 93-year-old body navigates the kitchen: bending down to get pots and pans from cupboards, reaching up to get things in and out of the fridge, casually checking in on the oven’s contents, and stirring whatever’s on the stove. Her movements are strong and deliberate: muscle memory. She knows what she’s doing.

There are no measuring cups and scales in my grandma’s kitchen cupboards. She has learned what works and what doesn’t, and adapted where she either had to or wanted to. Her gizzadas – sweet coconut snacks, traditionally baked into a round open tart with pinched edges – are a little bit different: My grandma rebelliously folds hers into a pasty shape instead.

I must have been about 11 or 12 the first time she made her gizzadas for me, the incredible smell of warm coconut, nutmeg, and sugar warming on the stove and travelling throughout her small flat. I remember her wrapping it up in foil and putting it in my lunchbox for school the next morning. In the playground at lunchtime, I carefully removed the foil and shared it with my friends, all of them curious about this unusual treat. Gizzadas are both soft and slightly crunchy, the pastry made from a bare-bones recipe of plain flour, baking powder, water, butter, and a splash of milk. And then comes that sweet coconut filling.

Growing up in suburban Middlesex, visits to my grandma in multi-ethnic Shepherd's Bush felt an opportunity to learn more about my West Indian culture. My grandma would take my sister and me to Shepherd's Bush Market, just around the corner from her flat. I loved hearing the many Caribbean accents as we strolled through the market, and seeing vegetables, fruits, and cuts of meat that just weren’t available in my local supermarkets. She’d bring the ingredients home, and while she cooked, my sister and I would sit at her kitchen table, and she’d tell us stories about her younger days in the Caribbean, like how she learned to swim by being pushed into a river by one of her friends. It was Carefree Black Girl living, years before that even had a name.

But what makes watching my grandma cook so remarkable goes beyond her wonderful stories, and the joy of seeing all 93 years of her life in her physicality. What’s most inspiring is her attitude towards cooking. What’s more important than egg timers, measuring cups, and scales? Fresh ingredients, patience, and most of all, a carefree attitude.

When she first showed me, aged 23, how to make gizzadas, it just looked like she was tipping arbitrary amounts of ingredients into a bowl. “How much grated coconut?” was met with something along the lines of “I just put whatever I feel like.” She gave me the same vague instructions for the sugar, nutmeg, and the pastry. I guess it was her way of teaching me to use my initiative.

– Fiona Rutherford

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You can find recipes for all the dishes featured here.

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