Skip to main content
Tag

Black Communities

The body of Ethel Freeman, in the wheelchair, was found outside the convention center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

When Blackness Is a Preexisting Condition

By Commentaries/Opinions, COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

How modern disaster relief has hurt African American communities By Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, The New Republic — Ethel Freeman became famous in death, even though no one knew her name. For months, she was one of the many nameless people who lost their lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s deadly intersection of race and class. Her son, Herbert Freeman Jr., had successfully rescued the 91-year-old retired school employee from…

Read More
An illustration about how the coronavirus is especially ravaging the African American community. Image by Jamiel Law for the New Yorker.

COVID-19: We’re in This Together (But Who Does “We” Include?)

By Black Family Summit News, COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

By Dr. Sharon L. McDaniel, BACW Board President — We are strong. I know we will come through this together. Whereas now there is despair, desperation and death, there will someday soon be recovery, renewal and life. I anticipate things will change. Perhaps online grocery shopping and virtual doctor visits will grow in popularity. We may also see a higher occurrence of daily hand-washing as a result of our new habits. But who is the “we” who will get through COVID-19 together? More importantly, will “we” all get through this in the same way? While a collective impact brings us together, does that same collective impact separate us more?

Read More
Enslaved Africans serving in Nieu Amsterdam

North America’s First Freed Black Settlement Right in our NYC Neighborhood

By Reparations

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…

Read More
“We’re Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired”. The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Demand for Reparations. A Statement by the National African American Reparations Commission

The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Demand for Reparations

By COVID-19 (Coronavirus), NAARC News, News & Current Affairs, Press Releases / Statements, Reparations

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…

Read More