America’s first impeachment proved it’s hard to impeach for behavior alone. By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate — On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Kate Shaw, a professor of law at Cardozo Law School and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy. The two discussed impeachment (what else) and assessed what impeachment inquiry is the best comparison for the current investigation—along with what the founders meant when they decided to…
By Jonah Pesner, Chicago Tribune — Americans in general and faith groups in particular increasingly find ourselves reckoning with our nation’s bigoted history and struggling with how to dismantle the racist systems and structures that persist to this day. As the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, it’s time for the Reform movement to join this conversation. It’s time for us to talk reparations. When I first read Ta-Nehisi…
White Activist and Group of Progressives Launch “Fund for Reparations Now” Will Support the National African American Reparations Commission. Los Angeles, CA — As support for reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans in America continues to build momentum across the country, David Gardinier, a Los Angeles-based racial justice activist, has assembled a group of like-minded White progressives to launch the Fund for Reparations Now (FFRN). The objective of this…
By Robert Gudmestad — Millions of people voted in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the…
December 9, 2019, Brooklyn, NY — Dr. Ron Daniels stopped by Automatic Studios in Brooklyn, New York for a signing of his new book Still on This Journey: The Vision…
Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today. By Linda Villarosa, New York Times — The excruciatingly painful medical experiments went on…
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,…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — Part 1. The conversations and controversy surrounding the movie “Harriet” of Hollywood seems, at first sight, to be simply about Harriet Tubman, the liberator, the…
This essay is an adaptation of the fourth annual Philip Roth Lecture, delivered at the Newark Public Library on November 4, 2019. The lecture began with an appreciation of Roth’s merging of fiction and history. An admirer of great historical writing, Roth understood that, to be truly great, it had to grapple with what he called, in The Plot Against America, “the relentless unfolding of the unforeseen.” Flipped on its…
By Michael McLean, HNN — There’s a fabled moment from the Battle of Fredericksburg, a gruesome Civil War battle that extinguished several thousand lives, when the commander of a rebel…
More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that. By Wilfred Codrington III, The Atlantic — s a color-blind…
In 1870, Henrietta Wood Sued for Reparations—and Won. The $2,500 verdict, the largest ever of its kind, offers evidence of the generational impact such awards can have. By W. Caleb McDaniel, Smithsonian Magazine— On April 17, 1878, 12 white jurors entered a federal courtroom in Cincinnati to deliver the verdict in a now-forgotten lawsuit about American slavery. The plaintiff was Henrietta Wood, described by a reporter at the time as…