By Whitney Stewart, Black Perspectives — How do you make a family tree when you may not know your family history? Beyond the very real physical and emotional toll on…
After Republicans lost their first election in 1856, the nineteenth-century Nate Silvers were happy to declare the antislavery movement a radical, fringe idea. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln won on…
By Christine Buckley, UConn Today — Last month, Georgetown University’s undergraduate students voted in favor of a referendum to voluntarily charge each student a fee to be paid into a…
By Jordan Brasher, The Conversation — The aroma of fried chicken and biscuits roused my appetite as the country sounds of Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson and Johnny Cash played over the loudspeakers. This might have been a county fair back home in Tennessee, but it wasn’t. I was in a cemetery in rural Brazil, at the “Festa Confederada” – the “Confederate Party” – an annual celebration of southern U.S. heritage held each April in Santa Bárbara…
By Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News — U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. introduced a bill in every Congress for nearly 30 years to study the institution of slavery and…
By LaMont Jones, Diverse: Issues In Higher Education — It makes sense that African-American students at Princeton Theological Seminary have issued reparatory requests based on research tying much of the…
Understanding what the conversation about reparations is, and isn’t, about. By Richard North Patterson, The Bulwark — In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote his seminal essay “The Case For Reparations.” Five years later…
Lincoln signed a bill in 1862 that paid up to $300 for every enslaved person freed. By Tera W. Hunter, New York Times — On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill emancipating enslaved people in Washington, the end of a long struggle. But to ease slaveowners’ pain, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act paid those loyal to the Union up to $300 for every enslaved person freed. That’s right, slaveowners got…
By examining scientific papers, correspondence between naturalists, and the records of slaving companies, historians are now seeing new connections between science and slavery and piecing together just how deeply intertwined they were. By Sam Kean, Science Magazine — At the dawn of the 1700s, European science seemed poised to conquer all of nature. Isaac Newton had recently published his monumental theory of gravity. Telescopes were opening up the heavens to…
By Jordain Carney, The Hill — Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said on Monday that he will introduce legislation creating a commission to study the issue of granting reparations to African-Americans….
From prize-winners Esi Edugyan and Marlon James to debut novelists such as Sara Collins, a new generation of novelists is exploring a painful past. By Colin Grant, The Guardian — Two hundred years ago, slave narratives seemed one of the few routes to publication for black writers on both sides of the Atlantic. Autobiographical accounts written by former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass proved enormously popular with readers, who…
Harvard University sued over allegedly profiting from what are believed to be the earliest photos of American slaves. By Joey Garrison, USA Today — Video — A lawyer says Harvard…