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Black History

Rev. Joseph Lowery with Rosa Parks

Undaunted Resistance: Joseph Lowery and the Spirit of SCLC

By Editors' Choice

By R. Drew Smith, AAIHS — Against all odds, a movement for racial justice took hold in mid-20th-century America, emerging from within the racially-heated South, and drawing sustenance from a rich-array of Black religious sources. A cadre of activist Black clergypersons were among the central figures in this historic social movement, with organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) epitomizing the promise of a socially-mobilized Black clergy sector. Although SCLC…

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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…

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Lorraine Hansberry at an NAACP rally in New York City, 1959.

Lorraine Hansberry’s Radical Imagination

By Commentaries/Opinions

For the playwright and activist, neither liberal reform nor countercultural art were enough. The very foundations of American democracy needed to be transformed. By Elias Rodriques, The Nation — In October of 1964, three months after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Lorraine Hansberry’s play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window opened on Broadway. At the time, Hansberry was already famous for A Raisin in the Sun, but the intervening years had…

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Black Like Who? Image by Bee Harris for NPR

Black Like Who?

By Reparations

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…

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