And how black people in Indian Territory were denied their rights even after their emancipation. By Alaina E Roberts, Al Jazeera — Last week marked the 153rd anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865. Rightly celebrated as a milestone for the black American community, the 13th Amendment led to the eventual liberation of all African Americans enslaved in the United States of the late…
Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy. By Annette Gordon-Reed, Foreign Affairs — The documents most closely associated with the creation of the United States—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—present a problem with which Americans have been contending from the country’s beginning: how to reconcile the values espoused in those texts with the United States’ original sin of slavery, the flaw that marred the country’s creation, warped its prospects, and eventually…
Inside a raging debate that has split the country’s most exciting new political movement. By Miguel Salazar, The New Republic — On an afternoon in July, nearly 200 people packed into the ballroom of a local community center in northern Oakland for a general meeting of the East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). As they settled into folded chairs on the room’s faded wooden floors, the…
The region’s inequality and violence, in which the US has long played a role, is driving people to leave their homes By Julian Borger, The Guradian — Jakelin Caal Maquín,…
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker — Cory Booker, one of a half-dozen Democrats routinely mentioned as a Presidential contender, is a man of singularly intense enthusiasms. He is a vegan…
Solomon Plaatje, an early ANC leader, came to America in 1921 to expose the growing number of race laws back home. By Matthew Blackman, OZY — A short, well-dressed 44-year-old…
You can attack the Palestinians in America uninterrupted, call to expel them and deny their existence. Just don’t dare say a bad word about Israel, the holy of holies. By…
By Ibn Safir, The Root — Yesterday, in a speech before the United Nations, CNN commentator and Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill advocated for armed resistance against Israel, stating…
The party was the natural political conduit for the protest movement. It must not betray that trust. By Gary Younge, The Guardian — With just a few thousand votes between the two candidates for governor, election night during the US midterms in Wisconsin could not have been more tense. The slender lead kept flipping between Republican and Democrat as various precincts reported their results. Then shortly before midnight a local news presenter suggested,…
By Peter C. Mancall, The Conversation — Sometime in the autumn of 1621, a group of English Pilgrims who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and created a colony called New Plymouth celebrated their first harvest. They hosted a group of about 90 Wampanoags, their Algonquian-speaking neighbors. Together, migrants and Natives feasted for three days on corn, venison and fowl. In their bountiful yield, the Pilgrims likely saw a divine hand…
By AFP — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has called on Washington to compensate victims and families of the 1989 invasion of Panama, accusing US forces of multiple…
There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel, including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that figure was only 6,000 just a year ago. By Strategic Culture Foundation, Mint…