African American History - KOLUMN Magazine

The Hunting of Billie Holiday | Politico

January 30, 2020April 5, 2020Jazz Music

How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival From his first day in office in 1930, Harry Anslinger had a problem, and everybody knew it. He had just been appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics—a tiny agency, buried in the gray bowels of the Treasury […]

America’s Black Holocaust Museum Hopes To Reopen Its Doors This Year | Wisconsin Public Radio

January 29, 2020January 29, 2020African American History, Black Holocaust Museum

Thanks To A Donation, The Museum Plans To Open In Summer 2020 [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) in Milwaukee is a step closer to reopening its doors after being closed for over a decade, thanks to funding from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. The museum was founded by lynching survivor, James Cameron in 1988. […]

The Story of Josiah Henson, the Real Inspiration for ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ | Smithsonian Magazine

January 28, 2020January 28, 2020African American History

Before there was the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a formerly enslaved African-American living in Canada wrote a memoir detailing his experience. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] From its very first moments in print on March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a smashing success. It sold 3,000 copies on its first day, and Frederick […]

Killers’ Confession | The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi | PBS

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020African American History, Emmett Till

Killers of Emmett Till Confess in Look Magazine [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Editors Note: In the long history of man’s inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible examples of brutality. The recent slaying of Emmett Till in Mississippi is a case in point. The editors of Look are convinced that they are […]

“Blind Tom,” born a slave, at the age of 10 became the highest paid pianist of the 19th century | The Vintage News

January 23, 2020June 19, 2020African American Entertainment

Tijana Radeska, The Vintage News “Blind Tom” was a musical prodigy who was born in slavery in 1850, in the state of Georgia. He was a contemporary virtuoso of Liszt and Rubinstein, but one who seemed unaware of his skin color, his fame, or his success. Blind Tom was aware only of the sounds and […]

$27 Million for Reparations Over Slave Ties Pledged by Seminary | The New York Times

January 22, 2020January 27, 2020African American History, Reparations ...

The Princeton Theological Seminary said it was committed to “telling the truth” about its ties to slavery. Black students don’t think it goes far enough. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] A New Jersey seminary has pledged to spend $27 million on scholarships and other initiatives to address its historical ties to slavery, in what appears to be the […]

Remembering the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre When Police Shot Dead Three Unarmed Black Students | Democracy Now

January 21, 2020January 21, 2020African American History, Racism

The 1968 Orangeburg massacre is one of the most violent and least remembered events of the civil rights movement. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] A crowd of students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State University to protest segregation at Orangeburg’s only bowling alley. After days of escalating tensions, students started a bonfire and held a vigil […]

Ella Baker’s Legacy Runs Deep. Know Her Name. | The New York Times

January 21, 2020January 27, 2020African American Activist, African American History

Her fighting spirit lives on in today’s social movements. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964, he observed that anytime an award is given to “the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into […]

When Minneapolis Segregated | City Lab

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020African American History, Race Relations

In the early 1900s, racial housing covenants in the Minnesota city blocked home sales to minorities, establishing patterns of inequality that persist today. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Before it was torn apart by freeway construction in the middle of the 20th century, the Near North neighborhood in Minneapolis was home to the city’s largest concentration of African […]

Christian Soldiers | Slate

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020African American History, Lynchings ...

The lynching and torture of blacks in the Jim Crow South weren’t just acts of racism. They were religious rituals. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] The cliché is that Americans have a short memory, but since Saturday, a number of us have been arguing over medieval religious wars and whether they have any lessons for today’s violence in […]