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For decades, structures such as Rosenwald schools were deemed insignificant.

The Fight to Preserve African-American History

By Editors' Choice

Activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected—and what it means to preserve them. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — No one knows what happened to Gabriel’s body. Born into slavery the year his country declared its freedom, he trained as a plantation blacksmith and was hired out to foundries in Richmond, Virginia, where he befriended other enslaved people. Together, they absorbed, from the revolutionary…

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Donald Trump allies hand out cash to Black voters

By News & Current Affairs

By Melanie Eversley, (Politico) — Maybe money can’t buy love, but allies of President Donald Trump may think it can buy votes from Black Americans. Allies of the president are organizing events in Black communities, using their time there to praise Trump and hand out tens of thousands of dollars to those who show up, Politico is reporting. National Diversity Coalition for Trump Facebook page. The first such event took place last month in…

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Actor Aishe Keita plays the protagonist, Rory, in “Reparations.”

Play ‘Reparations’ explores what makes us whole

By Reparations

By Rick Hellman, The University of Kansas — Playwright Darren Canady shocks audiences by opening his new two-act drama, “Reparations,” with a scene of a lynching. But he leavens that tragedy with later scenes of the love and dedication that sustained African Americans through centuries of trial, even offering an Afro-Futuristic vision of hope. Seattle’s Sound Theatre Company opened “Reparations” Jan. 8 at the city’s Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. It…

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Legacy Pavilion

Alabama lynching memorial expands to cover the stories of 2,000 more people

By News & Current Affairs

Source CNN — The first monument in the United States honoring the victims of lynching has become a must-see civil rights attraction in Montgomery, Alabama, and now it’s been expanded. The Equal Justice Initiative opened its new Legacy Pavilion on Saturday — just in time to welcome visitors to the Alabama state capitol for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend. The Legacy Pavilion features a new memorial recognizing more than…

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Reparations Day march in London, August 2019.

Can Reparations Help us to Re-envision International Development?

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

Reparations activism links today’s vast inequalities with the enormous culpability of colonialism. By Priya Lukka, Open Democracy — ‘Reparations.’ Once I heard that word from a friend, everything I had been taught as an economist was challenged at a fundamental level. As someone working at a large INGO where I have spent years targeting the drivers of poverty, I recognise that development isn’t…

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Protesters in Baltimore in the aftermath of Freddie Gray's death in 2015.

The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an ‘Aberration’

By Commentaries/Opinions

From mass incarceration to mass deportation, our nation remains in deep denial. By Michelle Alexander, NYT — Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has…

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