By Sarah Bean Apmann, GVSHP — According to historian Christopher Moore, the first legally emancipated community of people of African descent in North America was found in Lower Manhattan, comprising much of present-day Greenwich Village and the South Village, and parts of the Lower East Side and East Village. This settlement was comprised of individual landholdings, many of which belonged to former “company slaves” of the Dutch West India Company. These former slaves, both men…
A Statement by the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) — The novel Coronavirus Pandemic has revealed the longstanding disparities in health conditions for African Americans in the United States. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was “shocked” and “disturbed” upon learning that black Chicagoans, who make up 30 percent of the city’s residents, accounted for 70 percent of the fatalities. “Those numbers take your breath away,” she declared. These…
Research center needed urgently to address Trans-Generational Epigenetic Injury By Kamm Howard National Co-Chair of N’COBRA and NAARC Commisioner Transgenerational Epigenetics is a new field of science, about 15 years…
By Tyler Parry, AAIHS — In November 1864, a formerly enslaved man named Peter Bumper and his fiance Bucinda Nelson had their marriage registered with the federal government. Long denied access…
Reparations And The Elusive Definition of Black Identity By Gene Bemby, NPR — Black folks have officially been categorized by the government as a bunch of different things, depending on the political moment. During the very first U.S. census back in 1790, it was simply “slaves.” In 1840, it was “free colored males and females” and, of course, slaves. What was “black,” “mulatto,” “quadroon” and “octoroon” in 1890…
A major statement by the National African American Reparations Commission with an addendum on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) is convened by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and serves as a vehicle, among others, to intensify, broaden and deepen the Reparations Movement in the U.S. The Commission is comprised of leading African American activists, scholars, professionals and experts in the fields of…
By Antonia Williams-Gary, South Florida Times — I have a remedy to help flatten that curve. Reading this may make you some of you uncomfortable, but the more I learn…
By Bashir Muhammad Akinyele, Patch — Hotep Peace!!! Take notes!!!!!!!!! At an US Congressional hearing on reparations in Washington D.C this past summer, internationally famous Black author Ta-Nehisi Coats told…
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for coronavirus reparations for minorities, claiming higher numbers of COVID-19 fatalities in low-income communities stems from underlying inequality. By Ebony Bowden, New York Post —…
Sanders’ former national Black outreach director says the Vermont senator hasn’t yet learned from his past mistakes. By Marcus Ferrell, TheGrio — I know, I was there before. I feel like I’m in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day in 2020. I was working as Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 national Black outreach director. One morning while doing early outreach in South Carolina my Facebook page blew up. I was pinged in messages that said, “Bernie Sanders does…
But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million – NOT to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers. By Kali Holloway, The Nation — In 1870 a black woman named Henrietta Wood sued the white deputy sheriff who, nearly two decades earlier, kidnapped her from the free state of Ohio, illegally transported her to slaveholding Kentucky, and sold her into a life of enslavement that…
On the 400th anniversary of the ship’s landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the commemoration will be more inclusive than in the past. By Tanya Mohn, NYT — This article is part of our latest Museums special section, which focuses on the intersection of art and politics. Paula Peters remembers the last major anniversary of the historic voyage in 1620 of the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Mass. It was in 1970….