From UNC Press Blog excerpting Regina N. Bradley’s Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South While I do not suggest that hip-hop’s presence in the South is the sole marker of its contemporary existence, I do suggest that hip-hop… Read More ›
African American History
This Massacre of Black Soldiers During the Civil War Is Reason Enough to Bring Down the Confederate Statues
From History New Network by Alan Singer author of New York’s Grand Emancipation Jubilee: April 12 is the 154th anniversary of the Civil War battle and massacre at Fort Pillow, located on the Mississippi River near Henning, Tennessee. It was a… Read More ›
How did the Abolitionist Movement Grow?
From Dailyhistory.org: The movement toward the abolition of the system of enslavement has been remembered as one of the great humanitarian initiatives in modern history. Occurring as it did in a world that was rent by the slaveholding republics and… Read More ›
Three Women who fought White Supremacy before the Civil War
By Dorothy Wickenden from The New Yorker Senator William H. Seward’s enemies in Congress called him a villain and a traitor, but they rarely missed his parties. Invitations to his soirées—which took place several times a week in the eighteen-fifties, during Washington’s winter… Read More ›
Pharmacies played a key role in the Civil Rights – Why is that important?
By Greg Bond from the Points History Blog: On August 6, 1894, Abraham D. Cecil, an African American painter and interior decorator from Bloomington, Illinois, visited the drugstore of Hamer H. Green and ordered a glass of cherry phosphate soda…. Read More ›
Anti-Lynching Legislation in US History
By Todd Arrington at We’re History On October 26, 1921, President Warren G. Harding traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to participate in the city’s fiftieth-anniversary celebration. The Republican Harding, just seven months into his first term, was immensely popular. But the… Read More ›
Understanding Reconstruction – A Historiography
As the United States entered the 20th century, Reconstruction slowly receded into popular memory. Historians began to debate its results. William Dunning and John W. Burgess led the first group to offer a coherent and structured argument. Along with their… Read More ›
The Most Damaging Myths About Slavery, Debunked
From History by Yohuru Williams: Were U.S. slaves in any way responsible for their own misery? Were there any silver linings to forced bondage? These questions surface from time to time in the American cultural conversation, rekindling a longstanding debate… Read More ›
When Did Jackie Robinson Integrate Baseball and Why Is It Important?
Jackie Robinson was the first African-American to play in major league baseball on April 15, 1947. He went 0 for 3. He reached base once, scoring a run in a Brooklyn Dodgers victory. As a statistical line it was not… Read More ›
The New Orleans Streetcar Protests of 1867
From We’re History by John Bardes: When did America desegregate public transportation? Most people would probably answer 1955, when Rosa Parks’s refusal to surrender her seat ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the story begins at least 88 years before… Read More ›
Norman Granz: Revolutionizing jazz for social justice
From O Say Can You See: Stories from the National Museum of American History by Alexandra Piper: A civil rights protest often invokes the vivid images of sit-ins, boycotts, and marches, but the fight for racial equality took many different… Read More ›
What was lynching?
Lynching is often described as a form of extralegal, vigilante violence or justice; however, its meaning has evolved over time—from the tarring and feathering of individuals in the Colonial period to the lethal, racial violence that proliferated in the South…. Read More ›
No Reconciliation Without Truth
From The New Republic by Caleb Gayle: When it comes to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, there are two kinds of monuments in America. There are memorials that seek to honor this country’s fitful march toward civil rights…. Read More ›
A Writer at The Atlantic Uses History to Make a Point About the 2016 Election – And Historians Moan
From History News Network by Michael Brenes author of The Price of Loyalty: Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson and the Struggle for American Liberalism: Almost a year and a half later, there remains an insatiable public demand for an explanation of… Read More ›
Textbook Racism: How scholars sustained white supremacy
From The Chronicle of Higher Education by Donald Yacovone: There it sat on a library cart with 50 other elementary, grammar, and high-school history textbooks, its bright red spine reaching out through time and space. As I opened the book’s… Read More ›
1968 Baseball’s Opening Day and Dr. King
From Sport in American History by Jonathan Mercantini author Who Shall Rule at Home?: The Evolution of South Carolina Political Culture, 1748-1776: The 1968 baseball season was scheduled to start on April 8. Not every team was slated to play on… Read More ›
Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? His family believes James Earl Ray was framed.
From The Washington Post by Tom Jackman: In the five decades since Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead by an assassin at age 39, his children have worked tirelessly to preserve his legacy, sometimes with sharply different views on… Read More ›
The untold story of ordinary black southerners’ litigation during the Jim Crow era
From OUP Blog by Melissa Milewski author of Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to Civil Rights: In 1868 North Carolina, Henry Buie’s former master sought to take his mule away… Read More ›
How a Reporter Uncovered the FBI’s Secret Use of a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement
From History News Network by Marc Perrusquia author of A Spy in Canaan: How the FBI Used a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement: Bobby Doctor understood the movement came with peril. Eagerly, he dodged fists and boots while… Read More ›
History, Memory, and the Power of Black Radio
From Black Perspectives by Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders: Between 1948 and 1950, a radio series called Destination Freedom aired on WMAQ, a local Chicago NBC station. Richard Durham created Destination Freedom in an attempt to profile significant African American historical figures and their contributions to American democracy and… Read More ›