By Clyde W. Ford, The Los Angeles Times — In one of his first presidential speeches, Donald Trump said to a mostly white crowd in Hershey, Pa., “They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary. They didn’t come out. And that was big — so thank you to the African American community.” Had blacks voted in the numbers they did in 2012, Trump would probably not be president. So, his newly announced…
By Allison Miller — History, as a discipline, has a race problem. White people dominate the study of history, as students and as those who earn PhDs. According to federal…
To truly understand the debt this country owes to Black people is to be liberated from the bondage of miseducation that we’ve remained shackled to in the so-called land of…
Harvard Law School traces its origins to an Antiguan slave owner. Now the country wants reparations.
By Meagan Flynn, The Washington Post — In an urgently worded letter recently sent to Harvard, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne demanded that the university pay his country reparations “for the gains Harvard enjoyed at the expense” of Antiguan slaves. Browne’s Oct. 30 letter to Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow — reported Tuesday night by the Miami Herald and Harvard Crimson — draws a direct line from Harvard Law School’s success today…
St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has urged Caricom leaders to raise the issue of reparations for indigenous peoples and African slaves with their European counterparts as a priority. He said if those…
Address by Ambassador David Comissiong to the West and Central Africa Conference on the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent Organized by the United Nations Commission for…
Forty years ago, a gang of Klansmen and Nazis murdered five communists in broad daylight. America has never been the same. By Shaun Assael and Peter Keating, Politico — “Death to the Klan!” On Saturday, November 3, 1979, that chant swept over Morningside Homes, a mostly black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, as dozens of protesters—some donning blue hard hats for protection—hammered placards onto signposts and danced in the…
History has always been a weapon in the hands of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now, in his debut novel, the social critic and essayist sets out to recover those struggles for emancipation that have been lost to the past. By Elias Rodriques, The Nation — American history has always been a weapon in the hands of Ta-Nehisi Coates. As a blogger and columnist for The Atlantic, he wielded it to chronicle the long…
The director Roger Ross Williams on the Harlem ‘temple’ that has hosted legendary performers from James Brown to Lauryn Hill. By André Wheeler, The Guardian — The Apollo Theater is a living piece of black history. Located in the heart of Harlem on West 125th Street, the theater has operated as a refuge for black audiences and performers from its opening in 1934. Artists from James Brown and Aretha Franklin to Stevie Wonder and Lauryn Hill have graced…
Congressman John James Conyers Jr. (May 16, 1929 – October 27, 2019) By Herb Boyd — Unlike his often convulsive, tumultuous political career, former Congressman John Conyers, Jr. died peacefully…
By James Pasley, Business Insider — In 2016, former first lady Michelle Obama declared as a sign of how far the nation has come: “I wake up every morning in…
By Attny. Nkechi Taifa — Congressman John Conyers, during the 2014 Congressional Black Caucus plenary on reparations which you chaired, I spoke of the words of Mamie Till Mobley, the…