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Civil War

A woman takes part in a rally to mark Juneteenth on June 19 in San Francisco.

Reparations need to be part of the conversation about racial justice

By Reparations

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…

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Social Distancing = Communism: this is the ideological angle of Trump’s most belligerent storm-troopers.

Trump’s Zealots: White Supremacists and Evangelicals Gearing up for a New Civil War?

By Commentaries/Opinions, COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

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,…

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Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia by the Colored People, in Washington, April 19, 1866,”

Since Emancipation, the United States Has Refused to Make Reparations for Slavery

By Reparations

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…

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For decades, structures such as Rosenwald schools were deemed insignificant.

The Fight to Preserve African-American History

By Editors' Choice

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…

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No image of Henrietta Wood survives today, but her story is recorded in court filings, including the verdict slip above.

The slave who won reparations

By Reparations

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…

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