By Elizabeth Kim, The Gothamist — In 1958, Lenox Terrace vaulted itself into the rarified standing of being the first luxury apartment complex in Harlem. Built on three blocks as part of a slum-clearing project orchestrated by the city’s master planner Robert Moses, the $20 million development featured 24-hour “gold-braided” doormen, a fleet of porters, parking spaces and balconies that opened to sweeping vistas of the city that stretched as…
Address by Prime Minister Gaston Browne during the Caribbean Reparations Commission Regional Symposium on Western Banking, Colonialism and Reparations, October 10, 2019. I bring no special expertise or unique perspective to the issue of reparations. However, I am here primarily to signify my personal commitment to the fight to achieve reparatory justice. Approximately five years ago, on October 14, 2014, at the second regional conference on reparations, held at…
By Gabriel Sayegh, Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice — The fight to close Rikers is reaching a boiling point again. Next week, the New York City Council will vote on the land-use proposal for the construction of replacement jail facilities in the boroughs. The proposal is a major component of the City’s contentious plan to close Rikers, and the entire process has generated controversy within the movement to…
By Michael Z. Muhammad — Though there are differences, Blacks in the Western Hemisphere are suffering and need to find ways to connect and support their struggle, overcome racial oppression and thrive. That was a major message from “The Decade of the Diaspora: A Conversation on the Afro Descendant Experience in Latin America” panel discussion at the Washington Convention Center during the recent Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s…
By Julianne Malveaux — Twenty-one-year-old Deandre Sullivan overslept one morning. Selected to serve on a jury, he was supposed to report by 9 a.m. He didn’t awaken until 11 and figured he’d have to pay a fine for his no-show. But hours after he failed to appear, he was hauled into a West Palm Beach, Florida court. There, Judge John Kastrenakus sentenced him to 10 days of incarceration, a fine,…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — Clearly, there are important lessons we may sadly learn from the spectacle of Black forgiveness in a recent Dallas court after a White policewoman, Amber Guyger, was convicted of the murder of a Black accountant, Botham Jean, in his home while watching TV and eating ice cream. After Guyger was found guilty and during the period for the victims’ impact statements, Botham’s brother, Brandt, declared…
This year 2019 is significant as it marks 400 years since the first documented ship anchored the shores of America with chained slaves. Since they left through the Door of No Return, there is a mobilisation of African Americans to connect with Africa, through the Door of Our Return. Collaboration with the Diaspora in private sector, government, civil society is key in mobilising and sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies and economic…
By Thomas A. Foster, History News Network — Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men by Thomas A. Foster. Reprinted with permission from The University of Georgia Press. The promise of freedom may also have been used to entice enslaved men into sexual contact with white women. In eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, one court record of punishment meted out to a white woman and an enslaved man for…
By Lonnie Bunch, The Washington Post — In his influential treatise on race, “The Fire Next Time,” James Baldwin wrote, “To accept one’s past — one’s history — is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” Baldwin’s words…
By Heather Gray, Justice Initiative — Preface This will be the beginning of a series about where we came from and/or who was there already. Trump repeatedly says “Go back to where you came from.” So, I have questioned what on earth does he mean by that. All of us homo sapiens in the world came from Africa. But, also, as I started thinking about where I was born and where I…
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