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Slave ship diagram, first printed as a broadside in England in 1789

The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

By Reparations

What is euphemistically referred to as “modernity” is marked with the indelible stain of what might be termed the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism, with the bloody process of human bondage as the driving and animating force of this abject horror. By Gerald Horne — The years between 1603 and 1714 were perhaps the most decisive in English history. At the onset of the seventeenth…

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Black Lives Matter protesters march through the streets in response to the police shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California on March 28, 2018

From Stephon Clark to Voter Suppression, the Attack on Black America Intensifies

By Editors' Choice

By Nicholas Powers — It’s hard to watch. Guns aimed at the dark. Loud yells. Loud salvo. Night drizzle in the tactical lights. Cops mistook his cell phone for a gun. I know already, he’s dead. I finished watching the video of Stephon Clark’s murder. Days later, White House Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders labeled it a “local matter.” President Trump has stripped Obama’s mild federal oversight of police and left…

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Advertisement for a fugitive slave in the Oppenheim (New York, 1824)

A Database of Fugitive Slave Ads Reveals Thousands of Untold Resistance Stories

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

Freedom on the Move from Cornell University is the first major digital database of fugitive slave ads from North America. By Allison Meier — Readers of the May 24, 1796 Pennsylvania Gazette found an advertisement offering ten dollars to any person who would apprehend Oney Judge, an enslaved woman who had fled from President George Washington’s Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon. The notice described her in detail as a “light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very…

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"50 years after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, the same racial injustices still confront the nation."

Radical New Leaders Are Reviving Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign

By Commentaries/Opinions

The movement looks to rebuild the cross-racial civil rights alliance that disintegrated during a half-century of counter-revolution. Their radical vision is more necessary than ever. By Lewis M. Steel — The critical question long-time veterans of the civil rights movement and new activists alike ask is this: Are the times ripe for a newly energized movement to break the stagnation which has shut down most racial progress for the last…

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An activist holds a Pan-African flag during a protest disrupting the Association of Chiefs of Police Conference on October 25, 2015, in Chicago, Illinois.

To Honor King, Let’s Work to End Racial Capitalism

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Barbara Ransby and Aislinn Pulley — April 4 marked the historic 50th anniversary since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. At this time, it is vital to highlight the fact that King understood the depth of state violence, noting the violent effects of government policy in many spheres. As King said a year before his death, “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the…

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Students protest a speech by author Charles Murray, who co-wrote a book discussing racial differences in intelligence, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on October 11, 2017

Scientific Racism Isn’t ‘Back’—It Never Went Away

By Commentaries/Opinions

In the age of Trump, believers of the once-popular tenets of scientific racism are feeling emboldened. By Edward Burmila — Judging by the headlines, pseudo-scientific racism is making a comeback. Nineties-relic Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) is popping up on campuses and in conservative media outlets, much to the delight of those who think his graphs confer legitimacy to their prejudices. Atheist philosopher and podcaster Sam Harris is extolling Murray’s…

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President Lyndon Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the White House, March 18, 1966

From “War on Crime” to War on the Black Community

By Commentaries/Opinions

The Enduring Impact of President Johnson’s Crime Commission Elizabeth Hinton, Boston Review — In his televised speech following five days of civil unrest in Detroit during the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson announced the creation of the Kerner Commission to evaluate the uprisings there and in other cities, and to prescribe policies to suppress future disorder. The American public also demanded insight into why cities burned and what drove…

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