It’s an idea that has stirred controversy over the years: reparations to Americans harmed by U.S. government policies such as slavery and internment. On Saturday, Gesu Catholic Church’s Beloved Community…
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…
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…
Freedom on the Move from Cornell University is the first major digital database of fugitive slave ads from North America. By Allison Meier — Readers of the May 24, 1796 Pennsylvania Gazette found an advertisement offering ten dollars to any person who would apprehend Oney Judge, an enslaved woman who had fled from President George Washington’s Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon. The notice described her in detail as a “light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very…
After the abolition of slavery, Britain paid millions in compensation – but every penny of it went to slave owners, and nothing to those they enslaved. We must stop overlooking…
I’m running for Congress in Indiana, and I’ve been warned to stay away from “radical” issues. This shouldn’t be one. By Dan Canon — Editor’s note: Dan Canon is a…
5 Years After the Unmarked Graves of 1,000 Enslaved People Were Uncovered Near a Shell Refinery, Descendants Will Be Able to Pay Their Respects Breanna Edwards, The Root — Some…
Hari Jones discusses some of the most interesting facets of the Underground Railroad prior to and during the Civil War, including the role of African Americans in the war itself….
Slavery did not die because it was unproductive or unprofitable, as some earlier historians have argued. Slavery was not some feudal remnant on the way to extinction. By Sven Beckert — By 1830, one million Americans, most of them enslaved, grew cotton. Raw cotton was the most important export of the United States, at the center of America’s financial flows and emerging modern business practices, and at the core of…
The history-teaching wing of the Koch brothers empire is seeking to promote an alternate narrative to slavery. By Adam Sanchez, Zinn Education Project — Given that the billionaire Charles Koch has poured millions of dollars into eliminating the minimum wage and paid sick leave for workers, and that in 2015 he had the gall to compare his ultra-conservative mission to the anti-slavery movement, he’s probably the last person you’d want educating young people about slavery.
By Rabbi Sharon Brous — There is 2,000-year-old rabbinic dispute over what ought to be done if a palace is built on the foundation of a stolen beam. One rabbi, Shammai, argues that the whole structure must be torn down, the beam retrieved and returned to its rightful owner. No home can flourish on a foundation built illegally and immorally. Another rabbi, Hillel, offers a different take: What sense does it make to demolish it? Let the thief pay for the beam, considering its full value as the foundation of what is now a beautiful home. Neither argues that you can pretend, year after year, generation after generation, that the beam wasn’t stolen.
Rare victory for Brazilian poor, as record Amazon land tract is handed over to descendants of escaped enslaved people. Dom Phillips, The Guardian — It was a modest ceremony for…