African American history 
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SOURCE: The Guardian
4/15/2021
This Much is Clear: Derek Chauvin’s Trial Won’t Change Policing in America
by Simon Balto
A historian of policing warns that, while many hope for a guilty verdict, that result, by identifying and punishing "bad" policing, may effectively render legitimate forms of violence and abuse that are historially part of policing in minority communities.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/14/2021
How White Fears of ‘Negro Domination’ Kept D.C. Disenfranchised for Decades
George Derek Musgrove and Chris Myers-Asch, authors of "Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital" have recently written a report for a nonprofit advocating DC statehood. They argue that Congressional efforts to disempower DC residents after 1871 have reflected White fears of Black political power.
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SOURCE: TIME
4/14/2021
My Ancestors Were Enslaved—But Their Freedom Came at a Price for Others
by Alaina E. Roberts
Historian Alaina Roberts' work grew out of a family history in which her ancestors were brought to Indian Territory as slaves of Cherokee masters expelled from the southeast, then became landowners as the government erased tribal control of land.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
4/13/2021
Stacey Abrams’s Fight against Voter Suppression Dates Back to the Revolution
by Karen Cook Bell
"The roots of Black women’s activism can be traced back to the Revolutionary Era, when thousands of Black women protested with their feet and ran away from their enslavers." This act would shape the demands of radical Black politics in the ensuing decades.
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SOURCE: WBUR
4/14/2021
Professor Imani Perry Looks At Police Violence Through Lens Of History
The Princeton professor of African American Studies discusses earlier patterns of state-sanctioned violence against African Americans and the politics of images of police violence.
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SOURCE: CBS News
4/9/2021
Bill That Could Lead to Slavery Reparations Proposals May be Nearing Consideration on House Floor
The Biden Administration signaled its openness to a commission to study reparations to African Americans; a bill sponsored by US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee to do that will have a vote in the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
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SOURCE: Arkansas Democrat & Gazette
4/11/2021
Unsung and Unknown — Graphic Biography Details Life of First Black Lieutenant Governor, Oscar Dunn
Professor Brian Mitchell's path into history began with a teacher's disbelief that one of his relatives had been the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. He now tells the story of Oscar Dunn in a graphic form to make it as widely accessible as possible.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
4/12/2021
Black Protesters Have Been Rallying Against Confederate Statues for Generations
by Karen L. Cox
The movement to remove monuments and memorials to the Confederacy and historical figures with ties to racism or slavery is not new; it should be recognized as part of a longstanding effort by African Americans to challenge the public veneration of white supremacy.
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SOURCE: Contingent
4/5/2021
The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington’s Birthday
by Bill Black
A history teacher's saga of the verification of a seemingly simple fact shows that sources may not always be reliable, and that our knowledge of many facts is the product of historians' labor.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
4/8/2021
Black Soldiers and the Civil War
by Aston Gonzalez
Deborah Willis's book "The Black Civil War Soldier" utilizes visual imagery other historians have often passed over to describe how Black soldiers understood military service in relation to their hopes for future economic, political, and familial security.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
4/5/2021
What Manhattan Beach’s Racist Land Grab Really Meant
by Alison Rose Jefferson
Debates over the redress of past racial injustice must acknowledge that some past actions have harmed communities in ways that can't be repaired, including the loss of space for communal leisure or equal access to everyday pleasures.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/6/2021
If It’s Not Jim Crow, What Is It?
by Jamelle Bouie
NYT Columnist Jamelle Bouie relies on the historical writing of J. Morgan Kousser, who showed that disenfranchisement after 1877 affected African American and poor white southerners, was implemented through color-blind means, and had partisan, rather than simply racial, goals. But it was still Jim Crow, and the comparison to Georgia's new law is fair and valid.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
3/30/2021
The Emergence Of Gangsta Rap — A Review Of To Live And Defy In LA
by Katherine Rye Jewell
A review by historian Katherine Rye Jewell of Felicia Angeja Viator's new book on the rise of "gangsta" rap music in the context of racism, poverty and policing in South Los Angeles in the 1980s.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
3/31/2021
A Black WWII Veteran Was Beaten and Blinded, Fueling Civil Rights Movement
A new documentary examines the attack on Isaac Woodward in 1946, which catalyzed demands for full citizenship and civil rights.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
3/26/2021
The Art of Black Letter-Writing: A Conversation with Daphne Muse
by Joshua Clark Davis
Teacher, writer and activist Daphne Muse has kept up correspondence with an incredible who's who list of Black artists, writers and organizers. Historian Joshua Clark Davis discusses this archive with her.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
3/24/2021
Decades Before the Civil War, Black Activists Organized for Racial Equality
by Kate Masur
Despite being a "free" state, Ohio imposed special restrictions on free Black residents within its borders. In 1837 Black Ohioans began to organize a non-Southern civil rights movement that anticipated modern struggles for justice.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
3/26/2021
Mitch McConnell is Wrong. The Filibuster is, in Fact, Racist
by Keisha N. Blain
"Try as he might, McConnell cannot erase the historical record. To use his own words, 'There's no dispute among historians about that'."
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SOURCE: Business Insider
3/26/2021
Black-Owned Record Stores are Disappearing while Vinyl Sales are Skyrocketing. Some Shop Owners Say it's a Sign of a 'Whitewashed' Industry
The importance of Black musicians to American popular culture is not reflected in the ownership of record stores. Joshua Clark Davis explains why.
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SOURCE: Asian American Writers' Workshop
3/25/2021
Exploring Black and Asian American Lesbian Archives: Aché and Phoenix Rising
Two newsletters by and for queer communities of color in the Bay Area are a primary source for understanding how Black and Asian American lesbians created and maintained community.
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SOURCE: Public Books
3/23/2021
Pay Attention When They Tell You To Forget
by Christina Proenza-Coles
Writing across genres and time periods, the books of poet and memorist (and former Poet Laureate of the United States) Natasha Trethewey, historian Martha S. Jones, and poet-playwright-essayist Claudia Rankine constitute a conversation about Black women's work to remember history that is subjected to public suppression.
News
- House Panel Advances Bill to Study Slavery Reparations
- House Arrest: How An Automated Algorithm Constrained Congress for a Century
- Hank Aaron’s Name Will Replace a Confederate General’s on an Atlanta School
- How Domestic Labor Became Infrastructure
- ‘That Man Makes Me Crazy’: Neil Matkin's Reign at Collin College Draws Scrutiny
- “Containment and Control, Not Care or Cure”: An Interview with Elizabeth Catte on Virginia’s Eugenics Movement
- How White Fears of ‘Negro Domination’ Kept D.C. Disenfranchised for Decades
- The Sun Never Set on the British Empire’s Oppression
- Sounds of Freedom: The Music of Black Liberation
- How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom (Review of Louis Menand)