slavery 
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SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
1/30/2023
George Washington in Barbados?
by Erica Johnson Edwards
The local monuments to George Washington's 1751 visit to Barbados demonstrate the interconnectedness of American and Caribbean histories as well as the influence of Caribbean practices of enslavement on the institution in the United States.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
1/31/2023
Exhibition: Church of England's Links to Slavery
The exhibition is an acknowledgment of the church's investments in the transatlantic slave trade, but critics argue that the church remains obligated to pay reparations.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
1/24/2023
Some Escaped Slavery Without Escaping the South
by Viola Franziska Müller
The majority of people escaping slavery before Emancipation never crossed the Mason-Dixon line, finding a measure of freedom in southern cities.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/17/2023
Edward Larson Speaks to the New History Wars
by Jon Meacham
"To me, Larson’s unemotional account of the Republic’s beginnings confirms a tragic truth: that influential white Americans knew — and understood — that slavery was wrong and liberty was precious, but chose not to act according to that knowledge and that understanding."
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1/15/2023
Teach the History Behind "Emancipation" with the Primary Sources
by Alan J. Singer
Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith's "Emancipation" has rediscovered the life of an enslaved man variously called Peter or Gordon, who had been made famous through an 1863 photograph. Here's how history teachers can use the primary records of his life to accompany the film.
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SOURCE: NPR
1/7/2023
How Barbados's Reparations Movement Found the International Spotlight
The availability of clear records tying British families – like that of actor Benedict Cumberbatch – to Caribbean slavery has made the movement for reparations in Barbados and other island nations very visible, if not yet successful.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
1/10/2023
Was Present-Day Panama the Site of the First Slave Revolt in the Americas?
Papers in the General Archive of the Indies in Sevilla, Spain, helped Robert Schwaller to challenge the established timeline and expand the geography of slave rebellion in the Americas.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/21/2022
Was the Civil War Inevitable?
by David W. Blight
As a growing number of Americans entertain the idea that dissolving the nation might be better than holding its incompatible parts together, it's worth revisiting the series of decisions that led to the Civil War, and to ask whether the nation has, or will, experience the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
12/16/2022
Was Emancipation Intended to Perpetuate Slavery by Other Means?
by Sean Wilentz
Protests movements have latched on to a misguided interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment that argues it allowed and even encouraged the system of mass incarceration as an extension of slavery. A new global history extends that critique to the age of emancipation in general.
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SOURCE: TIME
11/9/2022
Will Smith's Scars in "Emancipation" Connect an Antislavery Photo and Racial Inequality Today
The violations of the bodies of the enslaved were part of the process of racist oppression; contemporary institutions exhibit practices that are not too much different.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
12/5/2022
William Still Preserved the Black History of Abolition at a Time of Danger
by Julia W. Bernier
After emancipation, the meticulous records William Still kept about the fellow Black people he helped to reach freedom became a tool in a different struggle: to fight against the erasure of Black humanity and power by proponents of Jim Crow and the Lost Cause.
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SOURCE: TIME
11/25/2022
Jefferson's Time in Paris Revealed His True Beliefs About Slavery
by Fred Kaplan
Jefferson's discussions of slavery with his intellectual compatriots was at odds with the pragmatic and self-serving decisions he made about his own business affairs.
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SOURCE: Education Week
11/16/2022
Scholars Weigh In: Is a Comprehensive US History Course Still Possible?
A Gilder Lehrman Center panel examined the potential and problems of trying to teach a comprehensive history of the nation in light of multiculturalism and the growing diversity of historical perspectives on slavery, emancipation and equality.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/8/2022
Review: Reevaluating the Grimke Sisters and White Abolitionism
by Drew Gilpin Faust
Kerri Greenidge's new history of the Grimke family of South Carolina shows that, while sisters Sarah and Angelina left the south to advocate abolition and feminism, the institution of slavery compromised all white people connected to it.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
11/9/2022
William Still: Forgotten Father of the Underground Railroad
by Andrew Diemer
William Still died in 1902 as one of the most famous and well-respected Black men in America. But since, the quiet nature of his work and his preference to preserve the stories of the individuals he helped to find freedom have diminished his standing among abolitionist heroes.
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SOURCE: Current
10/25/2022
Patrick Luck on How the American Slavery Economy Shifted from Tobacco to Cotton and Sugar
Historians have long recognized that the southern economy shifted from tobacco and indigo cultivation toward cotton and sugar in the late 18th century. A new book examines this revolutionary economic change and how free and enslaved Louisianans experienced it.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
10/20/2022
Daniel Smith, One of the Last Children of Enslaved Americans, Dies at 90
Although it's impossible to know exactly how many children of enslaved people survive, all of those interviewed by author Sana Butler for a 2009 book have sinced passed away, nearly closing a living link to the past.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
10/17/2022
Revisiting Saidiya Hartman on the Meaning of Freedom
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
A quarter century after publication, "Scenes of Subjection" still shows how Americans have embraced emancipation as a national expurgation of the sin of slavery, without stopping to consider the substantive meaning of freedom.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
10/18/2022
Confronting Slavery in the Archives at Georgetown
by Cassandra Berman
Jesuit records pertaining to slavery have been housed at Georgetown since 1977. Their unremarked presence highlights the important difference between presence and accessibility in the archives and the work required to document historical responsibility.
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SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
10/11/2022
Penn Students Questioned the University's Comforting Story about its Relationship to Slavery
The University of Pennsylvania embraced an origin story involving George Whitefield as a way to claim to be older than rival institutions. When it came to acknowledging Whitefield's advocacy for slavery, the university raised its Quaker roots as a shield. Kathleen Brown and students are trying to change the story.
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