By Olivia B. Waxman,Time — After the Independence Day military parade in the nation’s capital on Thursday, President Donald Trump will give a speech at the Lincoln Memorial, the most recognizable memorial to his predecessor’s leadership during the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. And yet, alternative Fourth of July commemorations across the United States often draw attention to a different side of that story, with readings of the…
The entire speech by Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 — Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the…
Talking to the people in Youngstown, Ohio, that the national media usually ignores. By Henry Graber, The Slate — YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—In 1984, Lewis Macklin stood up at a community meeting and argued that city officials should shut down his high school. It had been seven years since Black Monday—when Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced it was closing its largest factory, costing 5,000 people their jobs and setting off a chain of plant…
The reggae icon would be embarrassed by his country’s attempts to rebrand a disastrous ideology. By Keston Perry, The Nation — The island nation of Jamaica holds a special, almost spiritual significance for many people of color, as well as for anyone concerned about advancing equality and justice in the world. It is the birthplace of the Rastafari movement, reggae, dancehall—and democratic socialism before it became popular in the United States.…
There is no doubt that concentration camps are in operation on US soil once again. By Brett Wilkins — Concentration camp (noun): a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. – Oxford English Dictionary Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a…
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. — We’ve all heard the story of the “40 acres and a mule” promise to former slaves. It’s a staple of black history lessons, and it’s the name of Spike Lee’s film company. The promise was the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves, and it was astonishingly radical for its time, proto-socialist in its implications. In fact, such…
By The New York Times — The writer argued that African-Americans were exploited by nearly every American institution, before and after slavery ended. Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose 2014 article “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic rekindled the…
By Peter Birkenhead — How can it be that, in 2019, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates was forced to give testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committeethat sounded like it could have been given in front of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in 1866? How is it that, more than a century and a half after the end of the Civil War, a black man had to instruct members of the United…
By Amy Goodman & Nermeen Shaikh — On the heels of Wednesday’s historic hearing on reparations, we speak with renowned writer Ta-Nehisi Coates on the lasting legacy of American slavery,…
By Katherine Franke — A bill calling for the federal government to “study and consider” how to provide reparations to African Americans for slavery has been introduced into every session of the US Congress for the last thirty years. The bill’s aim is “to address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the thirteen American colonies between 1619 and 1865.” Representative John Conyers, the primary sponsor of the…
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