African American history

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  6/23/2022
  

  Preserving Local History in Water Valley, Mississippi

  "We always hear about important figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but I wanted to know about the heroes here in Yalobusha County.”

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• SOURCE: Evanston Round Table
  6/10/2022
  

  Northwestern Prof and Evanston HS Teachers Engage Illinois Black History

  "High school teachers are experts in their field; specifically they are experts in creating grade-level, adaptable content," says Prof. Kate Masur of her collaboration with Evanston HS teachers Michael Pond, Yosra Yehia and Kamasi Hill.

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: Scalawag
  6/14/2022
  

  Teaching Black History in Virginia Just Got Tougher

  Glenn Youngkin's attack on "divisive" history lessons clearly put the wishes of conservative whites at the center of the debate about curriculum. Now, a planned change to increase Black history in Virginia schools is on hold and Black students and families ask why their concerns are unheard. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  6/11/2022
  

  Milbank Memorial Fund Apologizes for Role in Tuskegee Syphilis Study

  The Milbank Memorial Fund donated pittances to the families of Black men who died of untreated syphilis with a grotesque condition: families had to agree to intrusive autopsies to gather information about the effects of the disease.

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• SOURCE: KARE
  6/10/2022
  

  Exhibition Shows Ongoing Toll of Minneapolis Freeway Building

  "We are clearly critics of 35W and the freeway system but I drove on a freeway to get here so I'm not above this history and I think we're all culpable," project co-lead Dr. Greg Donofrio said.

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• SOURCE: Hard Histories (Johns Hopkins University)
  6/14/2022
  

  What Reparations Can Look Like

  by Martha S. Jones

  Are directed cash grant programs undertaken by churches, cities, or other civic organizations a viable way to deliver reparations as part of those institutions' efforts to acknowlege the harm of their past actions? 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  6/9/2022
  

  A Marker Recognizing Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi is a Step Toward Justice

  by Keisha N. Blain

  As conservatives restrict the teaching of the history of racism in America, the town of Winona, Mississippi has taken a necessary step to memorialize the state-sanctioned jailhouse beating of Fannie Lou Hamer and other activists in 1963. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  6/8/2022
  

  Michael Hines Recovers the Legacy of Black Educator Madeline Morgan

  The pioneering educator recognized that Black students needed a curriculum that transmitted knowledge but also countered the prevailing ideology of racial hierarchy. A new biography shows how progress in education is never fully secure. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  6/7/2022
  

  The Second Destruction of Tulsa's Black Community

  by Karlos K. Hill

  Photographer Donald Thompson has set out to capture a visual history of Tulsa's Greenwood district, an African American community decimated first by the 1921 race massacre and then by urban renewal in the 1970s. Historian Karlos Hill interviews him about his work. 

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  6/1/2022
  

  Adolph Reed, Jr.: North Carolina's "Soul City" Always Showed the Failings of Black Capitalism

  A new book looks at a planned Black-led city in North Carolina as a missed opportunity for establishing political and economic power; a left critic says the project proceeded from bad premises that liberation could be achieved through capitalism. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/27/2022
  

  Memorial Day Was a Chance to Reflect on Hard Truths about Racism in the Military

  by Thomas A. Guglielmo

  The veneration of the surviving members of the Greatest Generation shouldn't hide the fact that discrimination in the WWII military and in postwar veterans' benefits shut many Black servicemembers out of American prosperity. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/31/2022
  

  HBO's "We Own This City" and Baltimore's Long History of Police Brutality

  by Mary Rizzo

  A Baltimore historian notes that the Black community's efforts to fight police brutality are much older than the War on Drugs. 

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• SOURCE: NBC News
  6/1/2022
  

  Reparations Report Details 150 Years of State-Sanctioned Harm to Black Californians

  "It finds that the damage to Black communities is extensive and that a variety of intentionally crafted policy, judicial decisions and racism by private actors has created a widespread exclusion of Black people that has not been sufficiently addressed at any level of government."

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/24/2022
  

  Historian Donna Murch on the Long History that Led to BLM

  "In terms of repression and resistance, it takes people and communities time to understand what is happening to them."

• 
• SOURCE: Places Journal
  5/30/2022
  

  Gordon Parks's Photos Show the Labor Keeping Weapons of World War II Greased

  Gordon Parks's photographs showed the humanity of the workers in the nation's massive war mobilization, notably at a Pittsburgh grease plant. 

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• SOURCE: Nashville Tennessean
  5/23/2022
  

  Teach Black History to Help Prevent Racist Violence

  by David Barber

  The state of Tennessee's efforts to restrict the teaching of African American history seek to prevent white students from developing a historical consciousness that would encourage them to reject white supremacy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/20/2022
  

  Buffalo and the Double Terror of Being Black in America

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  "For Black people to survive both racist policy and racist violence is grueling. To live as a Black American is to be a survivor."

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  5/23/2022
  

  How Violence Crushed the Achievements of Reconstruction

  by Clyde W. Ford

  Both the formerly enslaved and their poor white partners in governing pursued significant changes in the political economy of the south, but those they won were stripped away by violence. 

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  5/17/2022
  

  The Undiscussed Backlash to Brown v. Board: The Sidelining of Black Educators

  by Leslie T. Fenwick

  Brown v. Board was meant to ensure that children of different racial groups would share classrooms. But resistance to allowing Black teachers and principals to oversee white students' education led an estimated 100,000 Black educators to leave their profession.