Hurston spent years turning an account of the transatlantic slave trade into a book. Then the manuscript languished for nearly nine decades. By Casey N. Cep — Captain William Foster left Mobile in secret and returned the same way. On July 8, 1860, he dropped anchor in the waters off the coast of Mississippi, hid his cargo below deck, slipped ashore, and travelled overland to fetch a tugboat from Alabama.…
How Kanye’s ignorant comments fortify the most pernicious lies of white supremacy. By Clint Smith — This past week, in an interview with TMZ, Kanye West claimed that slavery was a choice. “When you hear about slavery for 400 years … 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said. Much has already been written about West’s recent exploits on and off Twitter. In the past week, he has publicly embraced…
Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom. By Ta-Nehisi Coates — I could only have seen it there, on the waxed hardwood floor of my elementary-school auditorium, because I was young then, barely 7 years old, and cable had not yet come to the city, and if it had, my father would not have believed in it. Yes, it had to have happened like this, like folk wisdom, because when I think of that…
By Professor Sir Hilary Beckles — Caribbean Prime Ministers witnessed it first-hand. They were gathered in England as a Commonwealth when Prime Minister May tried to take the sails out of the Windrush. They spoke of the crime of citizenship denied; they demanded justice for all West Indians. Prime Minister Holness spoke to the press and held the centre for the Caribbean. There was vexation in his eyes but his…
An 1863 photograph that became known as “The Scourged Back”’ shows the whipping scars on Gordon, a former slave in Louisiana who escaped to Union lines. Credit: McPherson & Oliver,…
By A.T. McWilliams — While visiting the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — a hallowed and harrowing enshrinement bearing the names of over 4,000 black people lynched in the Jim Crow South — I was reminded of stories my grandparents told me as a child. Stories of my great-grandfather, once chased by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback before swimming to safety, preferring possible death by drowning…
By Christopher F. Petrella — At 11:45 p.m. on November 6, 2012, Donald Trump tweeted that “the electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Four years later, at 2:31 a.m. on November 9, 2016, the Associated Press projected that Donald Trump would win the state of Wisconsin and therefore surpass the required 270 Electoral College votes to become President-elect. The AP tweeted: “Donald Trump is elected President of the United States.” Though…
By Mark Karlin, Truthout — By detailing the growth of the slave trade in the 17th century, Gerald Horne reveals how white supremacy, capitalism and the original sin of slavery in the Western Hemisphere became intertwined. Current politics are so chaotic, staggering and fast-paced that we rarely hear of how we arrived at this moment of the resurgence of white supremacy in historical context. However, Professor Gerald Horne, author of The…
By Aryeh Bernstein — Introduction: It has been two-and-a-half years since Ta-Nehisi Coates published “The Case for Reparations,” his Polk Award-winning masterpiece, in The Atlantic. The article makes a detailed and riveting case for the principled justice of reparations payments to Black Americans by the American government for the accrued, exacerbated, and lingering damage of slavery and subsequent manifestations of national plunder of Black Americans, such as Jim Crow laws in the South, and structural…
How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people. By Ed Pilkington in Montgomery, Alabama — Vanessa Croft was driving home after work in Gadsden, Alabama, last month when…
A new museum and lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, constitute a watershed moment in the way America remembers its racist past. By Caleb Gayle — When it comes to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, there are two kinds of monuments in America. There are memorials that seek to honor this country’s fitful march toward civil rights. Then there are the statues of generals and politicians—as well as the…
There’s reckoning around our toxic culture of sexual abuse. But Black Americans are left waiting for remedies for white supremacy past and present. It’s time to #PayUp. By Bertha Lewis — #MeToo and #TimesUp are more than hashtags. They are movements to hold sexual harassers accountable and to deliver justice to victims and survivors of sexual abuse and harassment. While the call for justice for women who have been sexually…