African American history

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• SOURCE: People
  10/26/2020
  

  Martha S. Jones on the Power of Black Women That Led to Kamala Harris' Nod for VP

  Shut out from the white-led suffrage movement by the beginning of the 20th century, Black women built their own political movement. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/25/2020
  

  A Virginia State Senator Found Headstones on His Property. It Brought to Light a Historic Injustice in D.C.

  Columbian Harmony is among at least five major African American cemeteries in D.C. that were obliterated in the past century for the sake of development.

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• SOURCE: Made by History at The Washington Post
  10/23/2020
  

  Malcolm X Warned Us about the Pitfalls of Black Celebrities as Leaders

  by Kyle T. Mays

  The media’s overemphasis on the voices of Black celebrities obscures the voices of ordinary Black people, whose lives are vastly different from those who have wealth and visibility.

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• SOURCE: Harvard Gazette
  10/21/2020
  

  Salvaging Another Piece of Black history

  Diving with a Purpose seeks to locate and document marine evidence of Black history, including the wrecks of ships involved in the slave trade. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/17/2020
  

  The Women Behind the Million Man March

  by Natalie Hopkinson

  Community archives such as the District of Columbia’s are critical interventions into the omissions of history. This one, like others, makes clear that behind every great feat in the public record lies an untold story of the unsung foot soldiers, architects, analysts and fixers — and these are often women.

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• SOURCE: History.com
  10/5/2020
  

  Why African Americans Were More Likely to Die During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

  Black Americans in the 1918 flu pandemic were anomalously less likely to catch the flu, but died disproportionately from it because of segregated medicine.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  10/15/2020
  

  Beyond the Myth of Malcolm X (review essay)

  A new biography of Malcolm X sets his political thought in the context of the midcentury Black communities where he lived and how his Black contemporaries saw him. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/8/2020
  

  Throughline: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (audio)

  Billie Holliday's legal problems over drugs were made more difficult by her refusal to stop performing the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit." 

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• 10/18/2020
  

  "Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone and Every Close Eye Ain’t Shut": Black Georgians' Memories and Election Unease

  by Alicia K. Jackson

  The unspoken realities of past voter suppression resonate in the present experience of many Black Georgians.

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• 10/12/2020
  

  My Memories of Voter Suppression

  by Lawrence Wittner

  After witnessing firsthand the depth of struggle needed to secure the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the author says the 2013 Supreme Court decision to gut the VRA and subsequent acts by state governments to suppress the vote "betray the most basic principle of democracy."

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• SOURCE: The Progressive
  10/5/2020
  

  The Nobility of Mobility: A Road Trip Through Racism

  Historian Chris West notes that “driving in a racist society” persists as a “gut-wrenching horror" in a new PBS documentary "Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America."

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• SOURCE: National Book Foundation
  10/6/2020
  

  National Book Foundation Presents "A New Black Politics?" October 14

  The National Book Foundation presents a discussion with Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the state of Black politics before the 2020 election and what's likely to follow. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  10/2/2020
  

  Remembering Wilma Rudolph, the “Queen of the Olympics”

  by Scott N. Brooks and Aram Goudsouzian

  "Maybe most important, Rudolph was a real Black woman, not a stereotype. The Olympics lent her a special platform at a unique moment in American history, and Rudolph capitalized upon it with grace."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/1/2020
  

  On Long Island, a Beachfront Haven for Black Families

  An examination of the centuries-old Black community in and around Sag Harbor on Long Island, first a working port, then a vacation destination for the Black elite during segregation, to a historic enclave threatened by redevelopment.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  10/1/2020
  

  Black Women are Leading the Movement to End Police Violence

  by Keisha N. Blain

  Throughout the 20th century Black women have led movements in protest of police violence and unequal treatment under law. Today's protests carry on that legacy. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/1/2020
  

  D.C. Statehood Is Good for the Democrats, Good for Democracy

  by George Derek Musgrove and Chris Myers Asch

  DC statehood will secure the citizenship rights of the city's residents and begin to repair the crisis of legitimacy caused by the gross imbalance of political representation in the U.S. Senate. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/30/2020
  

  Smithsonian Taps N.Y. Cultural Director To Lead African American Museum

  Since 2016, Kevin Young has been director of the Schomburg Center, a division of the New York Public Library and an important cultural organization in Harlem.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/28/2020
  

  The forgotten alliance between Black activists and China

  by Chang Che

  Black activists have long leveraged American desires for international legitimacy to forge antiracist alliances with China. Today, the Black Lives Matter movement has received support from Beijing, but must consider the costs of an alliance with a regime with its own human rights issues. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/29/2020
  

  The Persistence of Segregation in South Carolina

  The Supreme Court's artful directive to desegregate with "all deliberate speed" invited many school districts to do so as slowly as possible. Historian Millicent Brown was the first Black student to integrate a white high school in Charleston, South Carolina and has researched a book about the experiences of similar students. 

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• SOURCE: Muster: Journal of the Civil War Era
  9/29/2020
  

  Black Political Activism and the Fight for Voting Rights in Missouri

  by Nick Sacco

  Let us remember that throughout most of our country’s history, a majority of U.S. citizens never possessed a right to have their voices heard at the ballot box.