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Education

Military Recruitment

The student debt crisis is fueling the poverty draft

By Commentaries/Opinions

With the cost of higher education skyrocketing, many young Americans from economically struggling communities across the South and elsewhere have turned to the military as a solution for student debt. By Benjamin Barber, Facing South — Earlier this month, after a United States drone strike in Iraq killed 10 Iranian military leaders including the country’s top security and intelligence commander, elevated tensions between the U.S. and Iran raised alarms about…

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Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in St. Augustine, Florida. June 1964.

‘Until We Are All Free’: Learning from Tubman, King, and Stevenson

By Commentaries/Opinions

All of them returned to the South’s frontline struggle for racial justice. By R. Drew Smith — In 2020, January remembrances of Martin Luther King Jr. are occurring against the backdrop of two high-profile films emphasizing sacrificial servant leadership. First, the film Harriet provided a renewed focus on celebrated abolitionist Harriet Tubman. This biopic chronicles her mid-19th century enslavement in Maryland, her daring escape to a hard-won freedom in Philadelphia, and her…

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Plaque depicting warrior and attendants (16th-17th century), Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria.

Liberating the precolonial history of Africa

By Editors' Choice

The West focuses only on slavery, but the history of Africa is so much more than a footnote to European imperialism. By Toby Green / Edited by Sam Haselby, Aeon — To understand the complexity and significance of West African history, there is no better thing to do than to go to Freetown. Sierra Leone’s capital is sited in the lee of the ‘lion-shaped’ mountain that gives the country its…

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Sydney Labat, 24, and 14 of her Tulane University classmates posed at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, La.

Med students send message with plantation photo: We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams

By Editors' Choice

More than a dozen medical students from Tulane University posed at the former slave quarters in the hopes of inspiring others. By Mohammed Syed and Suzanne Ciechalski — It wasn’t by chance that more than a dozen black medical students dressed in white coats and posed outside the slave quarters of a Louisiana plantation. Russell Ledet and classmates from Tulane University planned the trip and photos at the Whitney Plantation…

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President Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted reparations to Japanese Americans

Another way to look at reparations

By Reparations

By Edna Whittier, The Roanoke Times — In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate Japanese Americans who were in internment camps during World War II. Offering a formal apology it paid $20,000 to each surviving victim and their heirs. In 2004, the State of Virginia established the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship fund setting aside $1 million (with another $1 million contributed by philanthropist John…

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John Harvard Statue

Harvard benefited from Antigua slavery. The two are talking about an education partnership.

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald — Harvard University and the island of Antigua and Barbuda are talking about an educational partnership following a letter the Caribbean island’s prime minister sent to the university requesting slavery reparations. A Harvard University spokesman confirmed to the Miami Herald that the school’s president, Lawrence Bacow, recently reached out to Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, to discuss how the prestigious university…

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Clockwise from top left: Michael Drake, president of Ohio State University; Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation; Cecilia Conrad, a managing director at the MacArthur Foundation; and Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard.Credit...

Black Scholars Are Not ‘Rare Creatures’

By Commentaries/Opinions

When Purdue’s president said this, I had to respond because this myth is so pervasive. By G. Gabrielle Starr, The New York Times — In late November, the president of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, told students that he will soon “be recruiting one of the rarest creatures in America — a leading, I mean a really leading, African-American scholar.” “Creatures?” a student asked. “Come on.” “It’s a figure of speech. You must have taken some literature,”…

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Terri L. Crawford with Senator Nina Turner

Protecting Democracy – An Interview with Sen. Nina Turner

By Editors' Choice

By Terri L. Crawford, JD, The Omaha Star — “Moreover, he shall speak for you to the people; and he will be as a mouth for you …” — Exodus 4:16 As the voice of the people, the Nebraska Democratic Party Black Caucus’ mission is to promote the involvement of Blacks in the political process and the activities of the party at the local, state, and national level. The Caucus…

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CRC - Prof. Verene Shepherd

Capitalism & Slavery: A Handbook for Reparation Advocates in the Post-Colonial Caribbean

By Reparations

Keynote speech by Prof. Verene Shepherd during symposium on reparations in Trinidad and Tobago on November 13, 2019. By Prof. Verene A. Shepherd Director, Centre for Reparation Research, The UWI Thank you Dr. Pemberton and good afternoon to everyone in this distinguished audience. Of course I must pay my respects to Prime Ms Erica Williams-Connell; Dean Cateau and her team of organizers; fellow presenters, reparation advocates, students, members of…

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Protesters outside the Howard County Board of Education building in Ellicott City, Md., last month.

Where Civility Is a Motto, a School Integration Fight Turns Bitter

By News & Current Affairs

A plan to desegregate schools in a liberal Maryland suburb founded on values of tolerance has met with stiff resistance. By Dana Goldstein, New York Times. Columbia, Md. — The planned community of Columbia, southwest of Baltimore, has prided itself on its ethos of inclusion ever since it was founded more than half a century ago. Racially integrated. Affordable apartments near big homes. “The Next America” was its optimistic,…

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