Video TRNN’s Jacqueline Luqman talks with NAARC Commissioner and N’COBRA National Male Co-Chair Kamm Howard about how the generations of racism created the conditions that made African Americans more susceptible…

By Carey Baraka, Quartz Africa — In April 1721, a smallpox outbreak swept through Boston. This was the latest in a string of six epidemics that had, since, 1630, laid waste to the city. Cotton Mather, a local slave owner and preacher, claimed to be in possession of a way of preventing contraction of the disease. Mather, who had first come to public prominence as one of the thinkers behind…

By Tanu Henry, California Black Media — On May 11, the California Assembly Judiciary Committee voted yes on a bill that would mandate the state to set up an 8-member commission to examine how California engaged in — and benefited from — the enslavement of Black men, women and children. If the bill, AB 3121, passes, it would charge the commission with coming up with proposals for redressing the “negative…

By William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, Newsweek — The COVID-19 crisis only heightens the urgency of black reparations. Long overdue, they are now more essential than ever. Mounting statistics confirm disturbing evidence of racial disparities in reported coronavirus deaths. In Wisconsin, perhaps the state with the most extreme ratio of black morbidity, black people represent 6 percent of the population and 40 percent of the deaths. Those…

TULSA, Okla. — The Black Wall Street Memorial committee and Tulsa Community Remembrance Coalition are launching the “10,000 Brick Campaign” throughout May to build a memorial to Black Wall Street in honor of…

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…