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Slavery

Reparations — Broken Chains

High schools to debate reparation

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

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,…

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A bronze sculpture representing an African couple and their child in Rock Hall Freedom Village in Barbados

Slavery Was Part of Barbados Life for Centuries. But Its History Can Be Hard to Find.

By Reparations

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…

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The University of Glasgow has examined the historical slave-holding record of benefactors. Photograph: University of Glasgow

Glasgow University to make amends over slavery profits of past

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

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…

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'Don’t want to let schools off the hook': Considering reparations in higher education

‘Don’t want to let schools off the hook’: Considering reparations in higher education

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

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…

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Should there be reparations for African Americans? Scholars tackle the topic at Monday panel

Should there be reparations for African Americans?

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

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…

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The Slaves Rebel - image by Mr. Fish, Truthdig

The Slaves Rebel

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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Fugitives escaping the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

The Eastern Shore of Maryland is the birthplace of many black revolutionaries. Why?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

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,”…

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Paul Jennings, an enslaved man who served President James Madison and his family. Sylvia Jennings Alexander Estate, The Atlantic

When Slavery Is Erased From Plantations

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

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…

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Ben Jacques walks among the unmarked graves of slaves at the Old Burying Ground in Stoneham.

A reckoning over the North’s role in slavery

By News & Current Affairs

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…

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