By Julianne Malveaux — Socially isolated and alone in my home, I lifted my fist into the air when I learned that the Mississippi legislature voted to remove the Confederate…
Police violence sparked an uprising, but racial equality demands economic reforms as well. By Nichole Nelson, The Washington Post — Over the past month, protests across the country, and even the world, have erupted in response to the death of George Floyd by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. While the protests have focused on police violence, the issues of racism are deeply rooted and multifaceted. In fact, addressing police…
Social Distancing = Communism: this is the ideological angle of Trump’s most belligerent storm-troopers. By: Gilbert Mercier — What the gun-toting, Trump 2020 and Confederate-flag waving Trump supporters have been organized and likely paid to do, is to make sure the U.S. goes back to work as soon as possible. Let us not be naive. If President Trump recently called on his adoring followers to “liberate” states like Michigan, Virginia, Maryland,…
By Tyler Parry, AAIHS — In November 1864, a formerly enslaved man named Peter Bumper and his fiance Bucinda Nelson had their marriage registered with the federal government. Long denied access…
But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million – NOT to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers. By Kali Holloway, The Nation — In 1870 a black woman named Henrietta Wood sued the white deputy sheriff who, nearly two decades earlier, kidnapped her from the free state of Ohio, illegally transported her to slaveholding Kentucky, and sold her into a life of enslavement that…
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 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…
By Michael McLean, HNN — There’s a fabled moment from the Battle of Fredericksburg, a gruesome Civil War battle that extinguished several thousand lives, when the commander of a rebel…
In 1870, Henrietta Wood Sued for Reparations—and Won. The $2,500 verdict, the largest ever of its kind, offers evidence of the generational impact such awards can have. By W. Caleb McDaniel, Smithsonian Magazine— On April 17, 1878, 12 white jurors entered a federal courtroom in Cincinnati to deliver the verdict in a now-forgotten lawsuit about American slavery. The plaintiff was Henrietta Wood, described by a reporter at the time as…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — This is a reminder, prelude and promise of a coming review on the movie “Harriet”. This is in joyful and grateful homage to our illustrious…
“The Water Dancer” comes out of a powerful examination of the legacies of slavery today. By Eric Herschthal, The New Republic — Eight years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an essay in The…
By Allison McNearney, The Daily Beast — On the skills section of Abraham Lincoln’s resume, badass orator ranks near the top. During the course of his career, the 16th president excelled at…