Past Voices
Boston Defies Trump on Immigrants the Way the City’s Abolitionists Once Fought Slavers – Kevin M. Levin / The Daily Beast
In a press conference at City Hall last month, surrounded by elected officials and black, Latino, and Asian staff members, Boston’s Mayor Marty Walsh delivered…
Heroes of a Civil War Victory That History Forgot – The Atlantic
On the morning of September 29, 1864, as dawn broke over eastern Virginia, some 7001 black soldiers in the 4th and 6th regiments of the…
When Ben Vereen Wore Blackface to Reagan’s Inaugural Gala – Pete L’Official / The New Yorker
On January 19, 1981, a number of prominent entertainers gathered at the Capital Centre, just outside of Washington, D.C., for the All Star Inaugural Gala,…
Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York life’s Complicated Past – Rachel L. Swarns / NYT
Abraham Lincoln Defended a Man Who Refused To Be Called ‘Negro’ – Ava Gabrielle / Huff Post
Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” as a Parable of Our Time – Clint Smith / The New Yorker
The Struggle and Triumph of America’s First Black Doctors -Karen Jordan / The Atlantic
African American physicians have dealt with distrust and misperceptions for more than a century. Around 1906, a young boy in Atlanta was stricken with a…
Parallels to country’s racist past (during and after Reconstruction) haunt age of Obama – John Blake / CNN
A tall, caramel-complexioned man marched across the steps of the U.S. Capitol to be sworn into office as a jubilant crowd watched history being made….
The Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans – Peter C. Baker / The New Yorker
In the week after the election, the Equal Justice Initiative, of Montgomery, Alabama, released a new report—a fifty-three-page addendum to last year’s “Lynching in America,” an…
A Young Black Girl’s View of Harlem at the Height of the Great Migration – Emily Raboteau / The New Yorker
Mildred Harris was born in South Carolina in 1926. She moved to Harlem as a baby, when her parents, Eddie and Jessie Mae Harris, joined…
Postscript: Sharon Jones, 1956-2016 – Amanda Petrusich / The New Yorker
In Charleston, Coming to Terms With the Past – Ron Stodghill / NYT
The compulsion to engage the Charleston area’s complex history as a slave-trading center was, for the writer, a visceral thing, akin to the urge to…
Malcolm X on Donald Trump – You Tube
Insert Trump for Goldwater. Malcolm X’s commentary on Goldwater running for president in 1964 is eerily relevant to our elections today. Watch here
Booked: When Slaveholders Controlled the Government, with Matthew Karp – Timothy Shenk / Dissent
Nat Turner – American Hero or Terrorist? – Village-Connect / You Tube Video – And a Discussion at Suffolk University by Three Documentary Filmmakers.
What are the distinctions between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? The debate over the meaning of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion has been at the…
Past Voices – Why We Need A Posthumous Presidential Pardon For Marcus Garvey – Julius W. Garvey / Huff Post
Past Voices – W.E.B. Du Bois -From Assimilationist to Antiracist / Race Inquiry
In the September 1933 issue of The Crisis, Du Bois published “On Being Ashamed,” a look back at the lifelong course of his own thinking,…
The perfect spot for a reckoning with Reconstruction – Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur
Understanding the Legacy of the Attica Prison Uprising – Lewis M. Steel / The Nation
Past Voices – Powerful Poem About Race Gets A Full Page In The New York Times – Maddie Crum / Huff Post
Past Voices – The storming of Attica D-Yard — One day that shows just how little black lives mattered – Lorraine Berry / Raw Story
Past Voices – Watch the (Indie) Works of Oscar Micheaux, Pioneering African-American Filmmaker – Justin Morrow / No film School
For a man the Producer’s Guild called the “most prolific independent filmmaker in American cinema,” African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux is a relatively obscure figure in…
Past Voices – George Washington Williams (1849 – 1891) / Blackpast.org
George Washington Williams was a 19th century American historian most famous for his volumes, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880;…
Past Voices – What Gun Control Advocates Can Learn From Abolitionists – Rebecca Onion / Slate
Slave ownership was once as entrenched in American life as gun ownership. Historical parallelism is a dangerous game. But in the days after the shootings…
Past Voices – William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass – The Abolitionists / PBS
The series “The Abolitionists,” premiered on PBS, January 15, 2013. The relationship between Garrison and Douglass evolved over time as evidenced by Douglass’s comment in his…
Past Voices – This black leader’s 130-year-old book prophetically predicted the rise of Donald Trump – Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856 -1928) / History News Network
Timothy Thomas Fortune was an orator, civil rights leader, journalist, writer, editor and publisher. He was the highly influential editor of the nation’s leading black…
Past Voices – A Blues for Albert Murray (1916 – 2013) – Thomas Chatterton Williams / The Nation
The name Albert Murray was never household familiar. Yet he was one of the truly original minds of 20th-century American letters. Murray, who died in…