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History

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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Rev. Joseph Lowery with Rosa Parks

Undaunted Resistance: Joseph Lowery and the Spirit of SCLC

By Editors' Choice

By R. Drew Smith, AAIHS — Against all odds, a movement for racial justice took hold in mid-20th-century America, emerging from within the racially-heated South, and drawing sustenance from a rich-array of Black religious sources. A cadre of activist Black clergypersons were among the central figures in this historic social movement, with organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) epitomizing the promise of a socially-mobilized Black clergy sector. Although SCLC…

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Enslaved Africans serving in Nieu Amsterdam

North America’s First Freed Black Settlement Right in our NYC Neighborhood

By Reparations

By Sarah Bean Apmann, GVSHP — According to historian Christopher Moore, the first legally emancipated community of people of African descent in North America was found in Lower Manhattan, comprising much of present-day Greenwich Village and the South Village, and parts of the Lower East Side and East Village. This settlement was comprised of individual landholdings, many of which belonged to former “company slaves” of the Dutch West India Company. These former slaves, both men…

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Lorraine Hansberry at an NAACP rally in New York City, 1959.

Lorraine Hansberry’s Radical Imagination

By Commentaries/Opinions

For the playwright and activist, neither liberal reform nor countercultural art were enough. The very foundations of American democracy needed to be transformed. By Elias Rodriques, The Nation — In October of 1964, three months after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Lorraine Hansberry’s play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window opened on Broadway. At the time, Hansberry was already famous for A Raisin in the Sun, but the intervening years had…

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Black Like Who? Image by Bee Harris for NPR

Black Like Who?

By Reparations

Reparations And The Elusive Definition of Black Identity By Gene Bemby, NPR — Black folks have officially been categorized by the government as a bunch of different things, depending on the political moment. During the very first U.S. census back in 1790, it was simply “slaves.” In 1840, it was “free colored males and females” and, of course, slaves. What was “black,” “mulatto,” “quadroon” and “octoroon” in 1890…

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