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Black History

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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President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. August 6, 1965.

Many Say Education of King’s Life, Legacy Remains Critical for Young People

By News & Current Affairs

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent — More than a half-century after the death of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., many of America’s youth are still in the dark about the life and legacy of the nation’s foremost civil rights leader. Brainly, the world’s largest online learning platform, recently surveyed more than 1,700 U.S. students to understand better what they know – and don’t know – about…

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Stewart's Canal in Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument

Harriet Tubman and a National Legacy of Midnight Skies and Silent Stars

By Commentaries/Opinions, News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Todd Lookingbill, HNN — Cynthia Erivo, who is nominated for best actress in a leading role in this weekend’s Oscars, stars in the gripping biopic “Harriet.” The movie, which tells the story of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, captures the miraculous physical, emotional, and spiritual journey of Harriet Tubman as she escapes from slavery to become an American icon. Of course, the horrors of slavery and the courage of the enslaved heroes that…

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USS Constitution. Cannons below decks.

Tale revealed of 8-year-old Black veteran of USS Constitution

By Reparations

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….

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African-American students from Saint Augustine College study while participating in a sit-in at a lunch counter reserved for white customers in Raleigh, N.C.

What People Still Get Wrong About Segregation

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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