By Danyelle Solomon — 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of Africans sold into bondage arriving on Virginia’s shores. It has been 156 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 55 years since the end of Jim Crow, and 51 years since the civil rights movement. All of these moments in U.S. history represent crossroads—moments where the country made a choice or where people demanded that the words on the pages of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights became more than words; that policies and practices were equitably distributed among all people, not just a select few…
By Calvin Schermerhorn, African American Intellectual History Society — This is an excerpt from Calvin Schermerhorn’s Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 2018). This excerpt…
Regional Headquarters, Jamaica. July 31, 2019 — A historic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by the Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Professor Sir Hilary Beckles and a senior official of the University of Glasgow (UoG), at a ceremony held at The UWI Regional Headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, on Wednesday, July 31, 2019. The document, framed as a “Reparatory Justice” initiative, acknowledges that while the…
By John Gage, Washington Examiner — Sen. Bernie Sanders received applause from the NAACP convention after explaining to the audience why he was against slave reparations. Moderator April Ryan asked…
H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, can help fulfill the promise of “40 acres and a mule.” By Taru Taylor, Truthout — The U.S. government was on the wrong side of history when they reneged their promise of “40 acres and a mule” to formerly enslaved Black Americans in 1865. Exactly 154 years later, let’s pass H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, and…
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,…
By Nicholas Wu and Deborah Barfield Berry, USA Today — WASHINGTON – Calling racism the “poison of America,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gave his support Tuesday to a bill to set up a commission to study reparations. “The disparities in race affect everything, not just the obvious things, but the non-obvious things” like pollution and climate change, Schumer explained. The bill, proposed by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Texas…
Beto O’Rourke says he is descended from slave owners, supports reparations to unite ‘two Americas’. By Vandana Ravikumar, USA Today — The former House representative from El Paso, Texas, published a Medium…
By Sandy Mazza, USA Today — ATHENS, Ala. – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born about 40 miles from his great-great-grandfathers’ Alabama cotton farms, worked by slaves 100 years before. Like so many long-standing Southern white families, McConnell’s forebearers built their wealth with free slave labor and cheap land. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned more than a dozen slaves, census records reviewed by the USA TODAY Network show. The…
A small African-American community has existed less than 10 miles from the president’s former plantation for generations. Only recently has the full extent of their relationship been revealed. By Audra D. S. Burch, The New York Times — CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — So many Monroes in rural Albemarle County remember the moment they asked a parent or grandparent if they were somehow connected to the nation’s fifth president, James Monroe. The…
By Michael Gerson, The Washington Post — The national debate on race — which the president has made more angry and urgent with his racial demagoguery — is hindered by imprecise language. Most whites do not feel personally guilty for the United States’ long history of imposed white supremacy. A white man who has lost his job at the coal mine, or the daughter of a recent Ukrainian immigrant, probably…
We can embrace the underlying spirit of the Declaration of Independence but also learn from its shortcomings. By Matthew Rozsa, Salon — It is painful to write about the shortcomings…