HAMPTON, Va. – As Walter Jones walks his family’s ancient cemetery, shovel in hand, he wonders about those who rest there. The gravestones date back as far as the 1800s. Some bear the names of folks Walter knew; some have faded to illegibility; some are in pieces. And, under the brush he’s cleared away and […]
View MoreTag: Black History
5 things people still get wrong about slavery | Vox
We asked historians to debunk slavery’s greatest myths.
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How Federal Policies Dispossessed Black Americans of Millions of Acres | Truthout
Over the 20th century, black people in the U.S. were dispossessed of 12 million acres of land. Half of that loss — 6 million acres — occurred over just two decades, from 1950 to 1969, a period largely associated with the civil rights struggle. This mass land dispossession, which affected 98% of black agricultural land […]
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A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans | The Guardian
100 years after hundreds of African Americans were reportedly killed in Elaine, Arkansas, a memorial is set to bring details of the tragedy to light
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Ibram X Kendi on why not being racist is not enough | The Guardian
The historian on how he confronted his own racism and the lessons he learned along the way, the far right’s abuse of free speech, and why the rise of the Squad gives him hope
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The Great Land Robbery | The Atlantic
The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms
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How Slave Owners Dictated the Language of the 2nd Amendment | The Daily Beast
Southern aristocrats wanted armed militias mainly to control their slaves. So they wanted language in the new nation’s constitution protecting that right.
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How Did African-American Farmers Lose 90 percent of Their Land? | Modern Farmer
A combination of obscure legal mechanisms and racist institutions enabled—and continues to enable—developers to weasel it away.
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Traditional African-American Gospel Songs Deliver Message of Hope and Freedom | The Epoch Times
EMG Inspired Staff, The Epoch Times A snapshot of mid-century South Philly. Featured Image [dropcap]African[/dropcap]-American spirituals are a valuable part of American history. Born out of an oral tradition that reveals Christian values while describing the hardships of slavery from the period of 1600 to 1870, the music and melodies of these songs are still […]
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Their ancestors were enslaved by law. Today, they are graduates of the nation’s preeminent historically black law school. | The New York Times Magazine
— Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times Magazine In the history of the United States, black Americans were the only group for whom it was ever illegal to learn to read or write. And so when emancipation finally came, schools and colleges were some of the first institutions that the freed people clamored to build. Black […]
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