emancipation

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  6/13/2022
  

  Can Law be an Instrument of Black Liberation?

  by Paul Gowder

  As activists debate whether the law and courts are a dead end for the pursuit of justice, it's useful to recall Frederick Douglass's conception of the law as a basis for collective demands. 

• 
• 6/19/2022
  

  "Oh, We Knowed What Was Goin’ On": The Myths (and Lies) of Juneteenth

  by Clyde W. Ford

  After the myths of Juneteenth are stripped away, the day symbolizes the incompleteness of the promise of emancipation. 

• 
• 5/25/2022
  

  A Century After its Dedication, the Lincoln Memorial's Meaning is Still Contested

  by Patrick Malone

  From its dedication to the present, the meaning and legacy of Lincoln and his memorial have been the focus of struggle between those who see Lincoln as the savior of the Union and those who claim him as the great emancipator.

• 
• SOURCE: Wash
  3/13/2022
  

  Painful, Cutting, and Brilliant: The Meaning of Freedom in Letters to Former Enslavers

  by Gillian Brockell

  Wages and economic security, citizenship rights and family unification were core concerns addressed in letters from free Black people to their former enslavers. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/18/2021
  

  Are We Witnessing a General Strike Today?

  by Nelson Lichtenstein

  DuBois's insight that enslaved people abandoning plantations during the Civil War was a form of general strike helps us understand the seemingly unorganized trend of workers quitting their jobs today as a meaningful labor action that points in the direction of economic freedom.

• 
• 11/14/2021
  

  Look to Lincoln's Interactions with Black Americans to Understand His Racial Attitudes

  by Michael Burlingame

  As Lincoln's personal racial views have come under scrutiny, a biographer says that the prominent and ordinary Black Americans the 16th president dealt with didn't have the doubts today's activists do about where Lincoln stood. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/4/2021
  

  Overturning Five Myths of the Haitian Revolution

  by Julia Gaffield

  Many understandings of the Haitian Revolution, from its intellectual and political roots, to its military progress, to its political consequences, are at best half-truths. And it did not entail "white genocide." 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/1/2021
  

  August 1 Was Emancipation Day in Britain, but Abolition Didn't Create Freedom

  by Padraic X. Scanlon

  Emancipation in the British West Indies was accompanied by policies that maintained the racial hierarchy necessary for profit through labor exploitation. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  7/4/2021
  

  What The Haitian Revolution Tells Us About The U.S. Movement For Racial Equality

  Historian Marlene Daut on the significance of the Haitian Revolution for America's unfinished struggle for racial equality. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/25/2021
  

  The Emancipation Proclamation did not End Slavery. Here’s what Did

  by Clarence Lusane

  Chattel slavery was ended by the enactment of the 13th Amendment. Whatever the merits of recognizing the Juneteenth holiday, it commemorates the specific emancipation of enslaved Texans, and not national abolition. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/18/2021
  

  The Truth About Black Freedom

  by Daina Ramey Berry

  Observing Juneteenth shouldn't be limited to commemorating a grant of freedom by the government; the deeper history of emancipation is of Black Americans demanding and pursuing freedom for themselves. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/11/2021
  

  Biographies of Women and Emancipation in the Americas

  by Vanessa M. Holden

  Historian Vanessa Holden reviews a new book edited by Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder which draws on the stories of women of African descent in the Americas to argue that such women helped bring freedom into being and defined what freedom in the world actually means. 

• 
• SOURCE: Medium
  1/4/2020
  

  Who was Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Why Does He Matter Now?

  by Julia Gaffield

  The anniversary of Haitian independence is occasion to rethink the legacy of the nation's first head of state, the uncompromising opponent of slavery and colonialism Jean-Jacques Dessalines. 

• 
• SOURCE: Environmental History Now
  9/8/2020
  

  Historical Black Lives Matter: What A Single Story Can Reveal About People & Landscapes

  by Natascha Otoya

  A primary document from the developing Brazilian oil industry demonstrates that the country's transition from slavery to "free labor" was anything but clear-cut. 

• 
• SOURCE: Brookings Institute
  8/26/2020
  

  Remembering When RNC Delegates Fought For Racial Justice

  The RNC abandoned writing any policy platform in favor of a statement of “enthusiastic support” for the decisions of President Trump.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/7/2020
  

  A New Statue Of Lincoln Will Adequately Honor Him Alongside Black Americans

  by Frank Smith

  The African American Civil War Memorial plans a different commemoration of Lincoln's role in emancipation. 

• 
• 7/26/2020
  

  "You Sold Me to Your Mother-in-Law...": An Ongoing Quest to Reconnect a Family

  by Ken Lawrence

  David Jackson had been forcibly separated from members of his family with no word of their subsequent fates for more than two decades, yet he had not given up hope of finding them. Can today’s historians shed light on his quest?

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/14/2020
  

  Black Conservatives Rebuke Call To Remove D.C.’S Emancipation Memorial

  Supporters of the monument, including dozens of conservative black thought leaders, pastors and politicians who came to the nation’s capital to defend the embattled statue, say its critics are misreading the statue and ignoring its history.

• 
• 7/19/2020
  

  "No Longer Just Lincoln and a Slave": Consider Mary McLeod Bethune's Lincoln Park Statue

  by Jenny Woodley

  Thinking of the Mary McLeod Bethune memorial in Washington's Lincoln Park in tandem with the controversial Emancipation memorial suggests ways in which commemorative spaces can operate as places of dialogue. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/6/2020
  

  Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down in Rochester, N.Y., on Anniversary of His Famous Fourth of July Speech

  In 1852, Douglass asked the city’s residents and the country: ‘What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?’