African American history

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• SOURCE: NPR
  3/22/2023
  

  The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

  "It felt like Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hand on me pushed me down on another one. History had me glued to the seat." – Claudette Colvin

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/23/2023
  

  New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective

  Books by Kidada Williams and Mari Crabtree shift attention away from the motives and mentality of white racist terrorists toward the impact on African American cultural, political, and psychological life in the wake of attacks by the Klan and other vigilantes. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/21/2023
  

  Historian's Book on 1970s NBA Shows Racial Politics around Basketball Have Always Been Ugly

  by Jay Caspian Kang

  The decade saw Black players become dominant in the league and assert their rights as skilled workers. Owners pushed back through the media, smearing the players as entitled drug abusers, as historian Theresa Runstedtler's new book explains. 

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• SOURCE: Lawyers, Guns & Money
  3/14/2023
  

  Tulsa's Black Wall Street Should be a National Monument

  by Erik Loomis

  Grassroots pressure to commemorate the site of the Tulsa massacre portends more public recognition of racial violence in American history. 

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• SOURCE: WNYC
  3/14/2023
  

  Anastasia Curwood on Shirley Chisholm's Childhood Heroes

  Born in Barbados, Shirley Chisholm moved to Brooklyn as a child. Her biographer discusses how her childhood heroes shaped her political worldview. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/16/2023
  

  How Textbook Publishers are Censoring the Story of Rosa Parks to Sell Books in Florida

  The conservative Florida Citizens Alliance, a group allied with the DeSantis administration, has called for rejection of 28 of the 38 texts its members reviewed. One publisher's editing of the story of the Montgomery Boycott illustrates their power. 

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• 3/14/2023
  

  Statement by People for Black History at University of Tennessee-Martin

  The leaders of a student movement to resist Tennessee's restrictions on course content charges that their university's faculty senate has failed to give their petition a hearing. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/6/2023
  

  Exhibiting the Black Panthers' Ephemera

  An exhibition of the radical group's posters illustrates the importance-and difficulty-of documenting political movements that used visual communications through ephemeral media like postering and newspapers. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/8/2023
  

  DeSantis Wants Us to Ignore What Black Children in Florida Need

  Historian Marvin Dunn's "Teach the Truth" tours show that Florida's history can't be taught without acknowledging white racism and terrorism. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  3/8/2023
  

  Scholars and Activists Join Open Letter Condemning Political Intrusions on Scholarship and Teaching

  An open letter by Black Studies scholars and activists asks why a right-wing political faction has been empowered to hijack the curriculum in Florida and at the College Board, concluding that, far from being "drained of meaning," purged concepts are threatening to entrenched power. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/8/2023
  

  In Chicago, the Political Vibes Echo 1983, but the Politics are Different

  by Gordon Mantler

  Harold Washington's victory in 1983 to become the city's first Black mayor promised a new multicultural coalition politics. Forty years later, that coalition is discouraged and demobilized, and seems unlikely to challenge the entrenched interests that Washington tried to dislodge from power. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/6/2023
  

  The NBA Embraced Blackness in the 1970s—Moral Panic Ensued

  Theresa Runstedtler looks at the NBA's key transitional decade as a time when Black players didn't simply change the style of play but demanded fair treatment for the value created by their skilled labor, following the ethos of civil rights and Black Power. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/24/2023
  

  A Different Kind of Unfree Labor Haunts a Houston Suburb

  by Ashanté Reese

  Texas's convict labor system was a first step in reasserting white dominance over Black labor through criminal law. The discovery of remains of convicted laborers on the site of a former prison farm show the need to reckon with unfree labor after the end of slavery. 

• 
• SOURCE: Seattle Times
  3/1/2023
  

  Quintard Taylor's Black Past Project Fights Erasure of History

  The Seattle Times editorial board praises the web-based library, now 16 years old, founded by a University of Washington professor. 

• 
• SOURCE: London Review of Books
  3/1/2023
  

  Review: The Unfinished Business of "Double V"

  by Eric Foner

  Eric Foner considers recent books on racism in the military in World War II and in Vietnam. 

• 
• SOURCE: 19th News
  2/23/2023
  

  How Social Media and Community Schools Could Fill in Gaps Teaching Black History

  As new restrictive legislation in many states threatens the teaching of African American history, the example of southern Freedom Schools is being followed in local and online communities. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/28/2023
  

  Conversations in Black Studies

  Komozi Woodard, Jeanne Theoharis and Robyn Spencer-Antoine discuss the 10th anniversary of an important monthly discussion series hosted by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. 

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• SOURCE: PBS News Hour
  2/27/2023
  

  Portraits of 19th C. Black Charlottesville Show Life, Joy

  The University of Virginia has begun to acknowledge the labors of enslaved people who built the campus. John Edwin Mason is curating an exhibition of photographs commissioned by Black Charlottesvillians showing how they saw themselves. 

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• SOURCE: CBS News
  2/25/2023
  

  Black History Month Traces to a Key Meeting in a Chicago YMCA

  Chicago historian Shermann Thomas, aka "Dilla," makes the Wabash Avenue YMCA where educator Carter Woodson was inspired to launch Negro Achievement Week a centerpiece of his guided tours of Black Chicago's history. 

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• SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
  2/26/2023
  

  How (Some) of the Hip Hop Generation Learned Black History

  Historian Pero Dagbovie traces shifts in hip hop's political messages and says that, to some extent the glorification of materialism replaced a focus on Black history and politics as the genre developed.