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IBW21

IBW21 (The Institute of the Black World 21st Century) is committed to enhancing the capacity of Black communities in the U.S. and globally to achieve cultural, social, economic and political equality and an enhanced quality of life for all marginalized people.

Five nations in the Indian Territory - the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole - kept back slaves for decades

How Native Americans adopted slavery from white settlers

By Reparations

And how black people in Indian Territory were denied their rights even after their emancipation. By Alaina E Roberts, Al Jazeera — Last week marked the 153rd anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865. Rightly celebrated as a milestone for the black American community, the 13th Amendment led to the eventual liberation of all African Americans enslaved in the United States of the late…

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White supremacists gather under a statue of Robert E. Lee during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 2017.

America’s Original Sin

By Editors' Choice

Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy. By Annette Gordon-Reed, Foreign Affairs — The documents most closely associated with the creation of the United States—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—present a problem with which Americans have been contending from the country’s beginning: how to reconcile the values espoused in those texts with the United States’ original sin of slavery, the flaw that marred the country’s creation, warped its prospects, and eventually…

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Ron Daniels, who held the first Kwanzaa celebration in Youngstown 50 years ago, speaks during a Kwanzaa celebration at New Bethel Baptist Church on Wednesday night.

Former Y’town activist surprises crowd at Kwanzaa opening night

By News & Current Affairs

By William K. Alcorn, The Vindicator — Ron Daniels, former Youngstown community activist and television personality, introduced as one of the founders of Youngstown Kwanzaa 50 years ago, paid a surprise visit to the first day of this year’s weeklong event that celebrates African heritage in African-American culture. “When we started Kwanzaa here in the former West Federal Street YMCA, we were among the first in the United States to celebrate…

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Do America’s Socialists Have a Race Problem?

By Editors' Choice

Inside a raging debate that has split the country’s most exciting new political movement. By Miguel Salazar, The New Republic — On an afternoon in July, nearly 200 people packed into the ballroom of a local community center in northern Oakland for a general meeting of the East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). As they settled into folded chairs on the room’s faded wooden floors, the…

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Slum dwellers are fleeing the country because of the lack of food, medicine and work.

The fallen metropolis: the collapse of Caracas, the jewel of Latin America

By Editors' Choice

Once a thriving, glamorous city, Venezuela’s capital is buckling under hyperinflation, crime and poverty By Tom Phillips, The Guardian — A portrait of Hugo Chávez and a Bolivarian battle cry greet visitors to the Boyacá viewpoint in the mountains north of Caracas. “It is our duty to find one thousand ways and more to give the people the life that they need!” But as Venezuela buckles, Chávez’s pledge sounds increasingly…

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Left: Joe Stewart and Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, both descendants of people sold as slaves by Georgetown University, arrive to hear about moves aimed at acknowledging and encouraging dialogue about the Jesuit-run university's ties to slavery in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 1, 2016

UN panel says the U.S. owes reparations to African-Americans

By Reparations

By Eugene Mason, PBS — The United States owes African-Americans reparations for slavery, a recent report by a United Nations-affiliated group said. The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent said that compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the color of their skin. The U.N. group warned that the U.S. has not confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism.”…

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