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…
In 1901, William Trotter founded an other Guardian – the Boston Guardian – to ‘hold a mirror up to nature’. We could use something similar today, writes Kerri Greenidge. By Kerri Greenidge — In 1901, William Monroe Trotter founded the Guardian newspaper in Boston. At that time, the more famous Guardian – the one you’re now reading – was published in Manchester, and Trotter had never traveled further than Chillicothe, Ohio.…
More than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, there were black people in the Deep South who had no idea they were free. These people were forced to work, violently…
The Dark History of New Year’s Day in American Slavery “Of all days in the year, the slaves dread New Year’s Day the worst of any,” one 1842 account explained….
From slavery to Reconstruction to Dylann Roof, the idea of “race war” has a long and bloody legacy in the United States. By Michael E. Miller, The Washington Post — It was high noon on Easter 1873 when the white mob came riding into Colfax. Five months earlier, Louisiana had held its second election since the end of the Civil War and the beginning of black male suffrage. But some…
“The white folks had sure brought their white to work with them that morning.” Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go. By Michael Mark Cohen — On Shouting White…
Real Viking society was multicultural and multiracial. So where does the white supremacist vision of their genealogy come from? By Dorothy Kim, Times — After New Zealand passed new gun laws this…
By David Barber, HNN — Just before the Thanksgiving break, flyers appeared on the University of Tennessee at Martin campus asking if students were “PROUD TO BE WHITE?” and suggesting…
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…
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…
The perils facing Blacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma didn’t end with the show’s season finale. By Dreisen Heath, Human Rights Watch, Co-written by Kristi Williams, The Real Black Wall Street Tour Company — Watchmen may have been snubbed by the Golden Globes, but the season finale left many viewers in awe. As Black women who hail from Tulsa, Oklahoma — where the Watchmen plot plays out — we hope the season’s biggest legacy will…
William Monroe Trotter rejected the view that racial equality could come in stages. By Casey Cep, The New Yorker — The mustache had to go. A classic nineteenth-century handlebar, it…