By The Jamaica Observer — The African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank (ACIJ/JMB), in collaboration with the National Council on Reparation will be staging a debate competition under the theme ‘From Enslavement to Reparation’, as part of its year-long series of activities on reparation. The competition, which kicks off this Tuesday, October 2 at 10:00 am at the Institute of Jamaica lecture hall, 10 – 16 East Street, Kingston,…
There are important monuments, plaques and sites on the island. It requires effort to see many of them. Will that change? By Jon Hurdle, The New York Times — A slender bronze sculpture representing an African couple and their child dominates a modest concrete plaza above a colorful jumble of houses in Rock Hall Freedom Village, Barbados, about a half-hour’s drive north of the island’s capital, Bridgetown. A few feet away, a granite…
University received ‘significant financial support’ from slavery in 18th and 19th centuries. By Martin Belam, The Guardian — Glasgow University has announced a programme of “reparative justice” after a year-long study discovered that the university benefited from the equivalent of tens of millions of pounds donated from the profits of slavery. The report states that although the university itself “adopted a clear anti-slavery position”, during the 18th and 19th centuries…
Scholars tackle the topic at Duke U. panel By Xinchen Li, The Chronicle — Reparations for African Americans are crucial to fight white supremacy and compensate for slavery’s consequences, scholars said at a town hall forum Monday, but they aren’t enough. Racial inequality and discrimination are so engrained in diverse aspects of the American society that no single measure would solve all the problems, said Wahneema Lubiano—associate professor of African…
Scholars tackle the topic at Duke U. panel By Xinchen Li, The Chronicle — Reparations for African Americans are crucial to fight white supremacy and compensate for slavery’s consequences, scholars said at a town hall forum Monday, but they aren’t enough. Racial inequality and discrimination are so engrained in diverse aspects of the American society that no single measure would solve all the problems, said Wahneema Lubiano—associate professor of African…
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig — The only way to end slavery is to stop being a slave. Hundreds of men and women in prisons in some 17 states are refusing to carry out prison labor, conducting hunger strikes or boycotting for-profit commissaries in an effort to abolish the last redoubt of legalized slavery in America. The strikers are demanding to be paid the minimum wage, the right to vote, decent…
By WP BrandStudio, The Washington Post — Within just four years, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, two of America’s most influential and notable abolitionists, were born in close proximity on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Douglass was born in 1818 in Talbot County; four years later, Tubman was born just a few miles south, in Dorchester County. When it came to their approaches to abolitionism, the difference between them was “marked,”…
Some presidential estates and other historical sites have struggled to reconcile founding-era exceptionalism with the true story of America’s original sin. By Talitha LeFlouria, The Atlantic — The story of Sally Hemings—the enslaved woman who bore six of Thomas Jefferson’s children—is told from the basement of Jefferson’s mansion at his Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia. The third American president’s legacy barely touches the brick floors and plastered walls of Hemings’s windowless…
Exclusive: As the world ignores the ignominious 500th anniversary of the buying and selling of slaves between Africa and the Americas, historians uncover its first horrific voyages By David Keys, The…
Modern scholarship is reexamining Haiti’s founding father. Julia Gaffield, The Conversation — Crowds cheered as local lawmakers on August 18 unveiled a street sign showing that Rogers Avenue in the…
By Zipporah Osei, Boston Globe — The Old Burying Ground in Stoneham is one of those classic New England cemeteries with markers honoring the memory of Colonial settlers as well as activists in the abolition movement. For much of the year, sections of the nearly 300-year-old cemetery are closed to the public. But every so often, the Stoneham Historical Commission opens up the space for guided tours of the tombstones…
The Transatlantic slave trade is regarded by Pan-Africanists as the Maafa, a Swahili term meaning “great disaster.” By teleSur — Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the International Day of…