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The conference of Berlin,

Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa

By Editors' Choice

135 years ago today, European leaders sat around a horseshoe-shaped table to set the rules for Africa’s colonization. By Patrick Gathara, Al Jazeera — On the afternoon of Saturday, November 15, 1884, an international conference was opened by the chancellor of the newly-created German Empire at his official residence on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin. Sat around a horseshoe-shaped table in a room overlooking the garden with representatives from every European country,…

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) sponsored HR 40, legislation to form a commission to study slavery reparations for African Americans.

Germany paid Holocaust reparations. Will the U.S. do the same for slavery?

By Commentaries/Opinions, HR 40 Congressional Hearing, Reparations

By Susan Neiman, Los Angeles Times — Born as a white girl in the segregated South, I’ve spent most of my adulthood as a Jewish woman in Berlin. This double perspective has fueled my resolve to explore America’s fraught relationship with its history. It is easy to point to the differences between the Holocaust and the enslavement and abuse of millions of Africans. When examining possible responses to these crimes,…

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Germany returns remains from 1904-1908 genocide to Namibia.

Germany Returns Remains Of Namibian Genocide Victims

By News & Current Affairs

A Namibian delegation has received the remains of Indigenous Herero and Nama peoples killed during the Namibia Genocide. By teleSUR — A Namibian Government delegation, in Berlin, has received bones and skulls of Indigenous Namibian peoples killed during the “first genocide in the 20th century,” on Wednesday. The bones were in Germany for “scientific” experiments in order to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans during the German colonial and…

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A quarter million Herero are estimated to live in Namibia today, with the population growing in recent years.

Why The Herero Of Namibia Are Suing Germany For Reparations

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Daniel A. Gross — Mbakumua Hengari grew up in the 1970s on a farm in southern Africa, in what is today the nation of Namibia. The arid soil around his family’s homestead was sandy and grassy, a poor fit for staple crops, so he and seven siblings subsisted on a modest herd of cattle, sheep and goats. Hengari blames systematic racism for his family’s poverty — and he and…

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Eluard Luchell McDaniels, Spanish Civil. War Volunteer, Batea, Spain, May 1938. Image Courtesy of the Tamiment Library, New York University

African American Anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War

By Editors' Choice

Anti-fascist volunteer Canute Frankson explained his motivation in a letter home in 1937: “We will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim crow trains, no lynching. That is why, my dear, I’m here in Spain.” By Peter Carroll, BlackPast.org — Approximately 90 African Americans fought in Spain during the civil war that engulfed that nation between 1936 and 1939.…

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Hitler, circa 1923. Five years later, he noted, approvingly, that white Americans had “gunned down . . . millions of redskins.”

How American Racism Influenced Hitler

By Commentaries/Opinions

Scholars are mapping the international precursors of Nazism. By Alex Ross — “History teaches, but has no pupils,” the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote. That line comes to mind when I browse in the history section of a bookstore. An adage in publishing is that you can never go wrong with books about Lincoln, Hitler, and dogs; an alternative version names golfing, Nazis, and cats. In Germany, it’s said that…

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Namibian former Culture Minister Kazenambo Kazenambo stands by a statue of Chief Hosea Katjiku-Ru-Rume-Kutako as he speaks of talks and negotiations about the alleged genocide committed by German forces against Herero and Nama people in 1904.

Germany taken to U.S. court over request for reparations from Namibian people…

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

The German government said Friday it had asked a US court to throw out a lawsuit brought by indigenous groups from Namibia seeking reparations for the genocide of their peoples under German colonial rule. It was the first time Berlin has formally responded to the class-action suit launched by the Herero and Nama people last year over the tens of thousands killed in the 1904-1908 massacres.

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