
Thursday, February 20, 2020, 6:00 PM — On the eve of the 54th Commemoration of the Martyrdom of “Our Black Shining Prince” to celebrate the life and legacy of Malcolm…
Thursday, February 20, 2020, 6:00 PM — On the eve of the 54th Commemoration of the Martyrdom of “Our Black Shining Prince” to celebrate the life and legacy of Malcolm…
By Brian MacQuarrie, The Boston Globe — David Debias passed explosives to the thundering guns of the USS Constitution on the night of Feb. 20, 1815. He heard US Marines shooting from the masts, watched razor-sharp splinters gash his comrades, and basked in the Constitution’s resounding victory over two British warships in its final battle, 180 miles southwest of Gibraltar. Debias was from Beacon Hill. He was 8 years old….
By Andrew Joseph Pegoda — During Black History Month and beyond, Americans are generally taught to believe that contact between white and black Americans was gradually prohibited after Reconstruction through a combination of social and legal traditions. Under the regime of Jim Crow segregation, two supposedly “separate but equal” societies gradually emerged — one for white people, another for black people — and lasted until the ’50s and ’60s. The two societies in that infamous phrase were never equal…
Black women like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker and Mary Church Terrell played a major role in the women’s suffrage movement. By Nsenga K. Burton — August 18, 2020 marks…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — As we contemplate various ways to celebrate Black History Month, we must ask ourselves how do we pay proper hommage to this sacred narrative we…
N.J.’s refusal to list the Camden home where MLK plotted his first protest on the state’s Register of Historic Places insults the civil rights leader’s legacy. By Linn Washington Jr., — A significant “first” usually merits the designation of historic. For example, the first formal protest against racial discrimination by civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in June 1950 — an action that produced King’s first lawsuit…
Black History Month lessons have been ‘stagnant’ for years, educators say. Here’s how some teachers are trying to change things. By Olivia B. Waxman, TIME — Freshman year can make…
Activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected—and what it means to preserve them. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — No one knows what happened to Gabriel’s body. Born into slavery the year his country declared its freedom, he trained as a plantation blacksmith and was hired out to foundries in Richmond, Virginia, where he befriended other enslaved people. Together, they absorbed, from the revolutionary…
By Alan Singer, HNN — Author’s note: On January 9, 2020 I delivered the Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute lecture at the Uniondale Public Library in Uniondale, New York. The presentation…
A black mess attendant was a Pearl Harbor hero. Now an aircraft carrier will have his name. By Kim Bellware, The Washington Post — It was just before 8 a.m. aboard the USS West Virginia, anchored in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the first torpedo hit. Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller was deep into the day’s laundry when the blast sent one of his lieutenants racing to…
In 1901, William Trotter founded an other Guardian – the Boston Guardian – to ‘hold a mirror up to nature’. We could use something similar today, writes Kerri Greenidge. By Kerri Greenidge — In 1901, William Monroe Trotter founded the Guardian newspaper in Boston. At that time, the more famous Guardian – the one you’re now reading – was published in Manchester, and Trotter had never traveled further than Chillicothe, Ohio.…
More than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, there were black people in the Deep South who had no idea they were free. These people were forced to work, violently…