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Liverpool

Liverpool street sign plan to highlight city’s slavery links

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

Liverpool could introduce plaques to give an “honest account” of places connected to the slave trade. By BBC News — Much of the city’s 18th Century wealth came from the trade involving British slavers transporting Africans across the Atlantic. Mayor Joe Anderson said paintings, street names and buildings in the city were “important parts of the historical record which should not be concealed”. He is calling for new signs to…

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Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in St. Augustine, Florida. June 1964.

‘Until We Are All Free’: Learning from Tubman, King, and Stevenson

By Commentaries/Opinions

All of them returned to the South’s frontline struggle for racial justice. By R. Drew Smith — In 2020, January remembrances of Martin Luther King Jr. are occurring against the backdrop of two high-profile films emphasizing sacrificial servant leadership. First, the film Harriet provided a renewed focus on celebrated abolitionist Harriet Tubman. This biopic chronicles her mid-19th century enslavement in Maryland, her daring escape to a hard-won freedom in Philadelphia, and her…

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Plaque depicting warrior and attendants (16th-17th century), Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria.

Liberating the precolonial history of Africa

By Editors' Choice

The West focuses only on slavery, but the history of Africa is so much more than a footnote to European imperialism. By Toby Green / Edited by Sam Haselby, Aeon — To understand the complexity and significance of West African history, there is no better thing to do than to go to Freetown. Sierra Leone’s capital is sited in the lee of the ‘lion-shaped’ mountain that gives the country its…

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St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ambassador to the UN, I. Rhonda King

SVG has ‘no geo-political axe to grind’: UN envoy

By News & Current Affairs

By Nelson A. King — In becoming the smallest nation ever to serve on the prestigious United Nations Security Council, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ambassador to the UN, I. Rhonda King, says the country has “no geo-political axe to grind.” “This day is a historic one, not only because we are the smallest nation ever to sit on the Security Council but also, perhaps, because the urgency of now…

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Rev. Amos Brown

San Francisco needs to establish a reparations fund

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Rev. Amos Brown, SF Chronicle — For the city’s black community, it is long past time for San Francisco to prove it’s “the city that knows how” — to prove it knows how to make amends for its historic injustices to that community. As we mark the celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is time for San Francisco to establish a reparations…

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