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Panelists from “The Decade of the Diaspora: A Conversation on the Afro Descendant Experience in Latin America” session during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation annual legislative conference.

Shining a light on Black suffering and slaughter in Latin America

By News & Current Affairs

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…

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The Freedman. Artist: John Quincy Adams Ward. 1863

The Sexual Assault and Exploitation of Enslaved Men in America

By Reparations

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…

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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History

400 years later, America still has so much to learn about its racial history

By Editors' Choice

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…

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A police officer aims his weapon after demonstrators

Haiti protesters ask the international community to stop supporting their president

By News & Current Affairs

By Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald — A massive crowd of anti-government protesters in Haiti cranked up the pressure for President Jovenel Moïse to step down Friday, taking their resignation demands to the United Nation’s peacekeeping headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where they asked the international community to stop supporting the country’s leader. Tying up traffic in front of Toussaint Louverture International Airport, the demonstrators — who later burned tires in front of…

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Students at Georgetown University have called on the school to create a fund to help descendants of enslaved people sold in the 19th century.

Georgetown students protest, demanding action on reparations for descendants of enslaved people

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Lauren Lumpkin and Susan Svrluga, The Washington Post — A couple dozen Georgetown University students broke into a chant Thursday outside a meeting of the school’s board of directors, seeking to put pressure on the university to do more to redress historical wrongs. “Respect our vote! Respect our vote!” they called out. A student vote in April overwhelmingly called on Georgetown to create a fund to help descendants of…

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