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The grand buildings of Bordeaux, France, were financed, in part, by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The city has moved to address that past.

George Floyd’s Killing Forces Wider Debate on France’s Slave-Trading Past

By Editors' Choice

Rather than tear down statues, some argue that the past should not be obliterated, but remembered and explained. By Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times — BORDEAUX, France — At a bend in the river, a succession of stately stone buildings, each more imposing than the last, stretches along the left bank. Their elegant 18th-century facades had helped Bordeaux, already famous for its wineries, become a UNESCO World Heritage site.…

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Rev. Dr. Robert Turner

Rev. Dr. Robert Turner Appointed to National Reparations Commission

By NAARC News, News & Current Affairs, Press Releases / Statements, Reparations

Keeping the Tulsa Massacre on the National Agenda. New York, June 25, 2020 — Dr. Ron Daniels, Convener of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), announced today that Rev. Dr. Robert Turner, Pastor of the Historic Vernon AME Church in the Greenwood/Black Wall Street Community of Tulsa, has been appointed to the Commission. Vernon AME Church was a proud beacon of hope in the community that came to be…

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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…

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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…

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A statue of former British prime minister Winston Churchill in London.

U.S. protests push Europe to face its own histories of injustice

By News & Current Affairs

By Ishan Tharoor with Ruby Mellen, Washington Post — Edward Colston was a 17th-century English merchant who rose to the position of deputy governor of the Royal African Co. His family became fabulously wealthy as a result, profiting from the company’s role in the British trade of African slaves to the New World. Under Colston’s watch, about 84,000 Africans were shipped to lives of bondage and misery. An estimated 19,000 of them perished during the…

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A protester in Minneapolis on Thursday.

From the Black Panthers to Black Lives Matter, the ongoing fight to end police violence against black Americans

By Editors' Choice

By Peniel E. Joseph, The Washington Post — The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent protests, which featured law enforcement tear-gassing demonstrators, highlight the urgent need to transform America’s criminal justice system. Floyd, 46, managed to outrun the coronavirus pandemic that has taken too many black lives, only to be ensnared by that quintessentially American and dangerously malignant virus of white supremacy. In a video capture eerily reminiscent…

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Panel from the Florentine Cortex depicting smallpox outbreaks in the Americas during the 16th century.

Aztec Kings Had Rules for Plagues, Including ‘Do Not Be a Fool’

By Commentaries/Opinions, COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

But When Cortés’s Soldiers Arrived Carrying a Novel Virus, the Empire First Succumbed to Smallpox and Then Fell to Spain. By David Bowles, Zocalo Public Square — Every civilization eventually faces a crisis that forces it to adapt or be destroyed. Few adapt. On July 10, 1520, Aztec forces vanquished the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men, driving them from Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire. The Spanish soldiers…

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