Skip to main content
Tag

Emancipation

Amandla Baraka: We Keep Us Safe, June 2020

‘We Must Act Out Our Freedom’

By Editors' Choice

By Darryl Pinckney, NYREV — I will look for you in the stories of new kings. Juneteenth isn’t mentioned in the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois or Carter Woodson, the founder of The Journal of Negro History. I haven’t yet come across a description of the first Juneteenth celebrations equivalent to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s report of the ceremonies for the Emancipation Proclamation as it was read aloud on Port Royal…

Read More
Smoke rises from damaged properties after the Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma June 1921.

From grandfather to grandson, the lessons of the Tulsa race massacre

By Editors' Choice

By Gregory B. Fairchild — My family sat down to watch the first episode of HBO’s “Watchmen” last October. Stephen Williams, the director, included quick cuts of gunshots, explosions, citizens fleeing roaming mobs, and even a plane dropping bombs. We’ve come to anticipate these elements in superhero films. As the sepia-toned footage spooled across the screen, the words “Tulsa 1921” were superimposed over the mayhem. My throat tightened. I knew…

Read More
Chi Oriji leads a group in dance during the Juneteenth MusicFest and Parade, recognizing the end of slavery in America in Philadelphia on June 23, 2018.

Activists Are Pushing to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday

By News & Current Affairs

Here’s the History Behind Their Fight. By Olivia B. Waxman, Times — When President Donald Trump announced last week that he would hold a campaign rally in Tulsa on June 19, the backlash was swift. The speech was to take place near the site of a 1921 race massacre, and June 19 is celebrated each year as Juneteenth, in honor of the day in 1865 when enslaved men and women in…

Read More
Former slaves harvesting for their own profit.

Land loss has plagued black America since emancipation – is it time to look again at ‘black commons’ and collective ownership?

By Reparations

Black farmers own far less land than they did in 1910 and the racial gap in homeownership is at the highest level for 50 years. By Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone — Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S. The “40 acres and a mule” promised to…

Read More