From slavery to Reconstruction to Dylann Roof, the idea of “race war” has a long and bloody legacy in the United States. By Michael E. Miller, The Washington Post — It was high noon on Easter 1873 when the white mob came riding into Colfax. Five months earlier, Louisiana had held its second election since the end of the Civil War and the beginning of black male suffrage. But some…
“The white folks had sure brought their white to work with them that morning.” Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go. By Michael Mark Cohen — On Shouting White…
By David Barber, HNN — Just before the Thanksgiving break, flyers appeared on the University of Tennessee at Martin campus asking if students were “PROUD TO BE WHITE?” and suggesting…
More than a dozen medical students from Tulane University posed at the former slave quarters in the hopes of inspiring others. By Mohammed Syed and Suzanne Ciechalski — It wasn’t by chance that more than a dozen black medical students dressed in white coats and posed outside the slave quarters of a Louisiana plantation. Russell Ledet and classmates from Tulane University planned the trip and photos at the Whitney Plantation…
By Edna Whittier, The Roanoke Times — In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate Japanese Americans who were in internment camps during World War II. Offering a formal apology it paid $20,000 to each surviving victim and their heirs. In 2004, the State of Virginia established the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship fund setting aside $1 million (with another $1 million contributed by philanthropist John…
The perils facing Blacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma didn’t end with the show’s season finale. By Dreisen Heath, Human Rights Watch, Co-written by Kristi Williams, The Real Black Wall Street Tour Company — Watchmen may have been snubbed by the Golden Globes, but the season finale left many viewers in awe. As Black women who hail from Tulsa, Oklahoma — where the Watchmen plot plays out — we hope the season’s biggest legacy will…
William Monroe Trotter rejected the view that racial equality could come in stages. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — The mustache had to go. A classic nineteenth-century handlebar, it…
America’s first impeachment proved it’s hard to impeach for behavior alone. By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate — On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Kate Shaw, a professor of law at Cardozo Law School and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy. The two discussed impeachment (what else) and assessed what impeachment inquiry is the best comparison for the current investigation—along with what the founders meant when they decided to…
By Jonah Pesner, Chicago Tribune — Americans in general and faith groups in particular increasingly find ourselves reckoning with our nation’s bigoted history and struggling with how to dismantle the racist systems and structures that persist to this day. As the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, it’s time for the Reform movement to join this conversation. It’s time for us to talk reparations. When I first read Ta-Nehisi…
White Activist and Group of Progressives Launch “Fund for Reparations Now” Will Support the National African American Reparations Commission. Los Angeles, CA — As support for reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans in America continues to build momentum across the country, David Gardinier, a Los Angeles-based racial justice activist, has assembled a group of like-minded White progressives to launch the Fund for Reparations Now (FFRN). The objective of this…
By Robert Gudmestad — Millions of people voted in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the…
December 9, 2019, Brooklyn, NY — Dr. Ron Daniels stopped by Automatic Studios in Brooklyn, New York for a signing of his new book Still on This Journey: The Vision…