Skip to main content
Tag

Slavery

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, centre left, hosts a meeting with leaders and representatives of Caribbean countries, inside 10 Downing Street in central London, Tuesday April 17, 2017, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM). May met with Caribbean leaders and envoys Tuesday, and told them "we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused" personally apologizing for the treatment of long-term U.K. residents from the Caribbean who have been asked to prove their right to stay in the country.

Windrush: Brexit and Blackxit

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

Read More
Visitors at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, April 26.

Lynching Didn’t Disappear, It Just Evolved

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

Read More
Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy. (Image: Wikipedia)

Slavery, Democracy and the Racialized Roots of the Electoral College

By Reparations

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…

Read More
A sculpture by artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, part of the Nkyinkyim Installation, of enslaved people in chains is shown after entering The National Memorial for Peace and Justice on April 20, 2018, in Montgomery, Al.

“Freedom” and “Liberty” Were Only for Whites in Settler Colonialism

By Editors' Choice

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…

Read More
The Israelites despoiling the Egyptians. Image from f. 13 of the ‘Golden Haggadah.” 1325–1349

The Torah Case for Reparations

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

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…

Read More
Montgomery, Alabama - The Legacy Museum and the Memorial for Peace and Justice

No Reconciliation Without Truth

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

Read More
Black people simply do not see the same response to our complaints as we do when the victims of injustice include white people.

Make Change by Hitting the National Wallet: Reparations for Racial Injustice

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

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…

Read More
Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal

Missouri senator calls for reparations for slavery, criticizes McCaskill, Democrats

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Allison Kite — Concerned about the plight of black people in her Missouri district, a Democratic state senator on Tuesday called for reparations for former slaves and criticized her own party for taking African American votes for granted. Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, criticized white Democrats, such as U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, saying there’s “no difference” between them and Republicans. Both parties, she said, have failed black people. “Neither…

Read More
Slave ship diagram, first printed as a broadside in England in 1789

The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

By Reparations

What is euphemistically referred to as “modernity” is marked with the indelible stain of what might be termed the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism, with the bloody process of human bondage as the driving and animating force of this abject horror. By Gerald Horne — The years between 1603 and 1714 were perhaps the most decisive in English history. At the onset of the seventeenth…

Read More