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…
Past Voices
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…
Past Voices – Pride and Prejudice: The Early History of African Americans in Medicine by Russell W. Irvine
Travis J.A. Johnson, a member of the Class of 1908, is widely hailed as the first black graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons…
Past Voices – Martin Henry Freeman (1826 -1889) – Russell W. Irvine
Martin Henry Freeman’s life can be divided into two periods: his 37-year residence in America and his 25-year stay in Liberia, Africa. Freeman was born…
Past Voices – The Brown v. Board Decision : “The Impact of the Desegregation Process on the Education of Black Students ” (1983) – Russell W. Irvine and Jacqueline J. Irvine
Few, if any, events in this century have rivaled the impact of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education. l The decision…
Past Voices – Andrew Jackson’s Adopted Indian Son – Rebecca Onion / Slate
Was bringing home an Indian boy after slaughtering his family an act of compassion or of political expedience? Read more
Past Voices – Negroes and the Gun: A Winchester “in every Black home” – Nicholas Johnson / Wash Post
Past Voices – Cornelius Johnson and a Forgotten US Protest Against Hitler at the 1936 Olympic – Steven J. Niven / The Root –
Past Voices – Discovering a different side of black history in the archives of the black press – Rebecca Onion / Slate
‘Roller Skating Socials and a Black Rosie the Riveter.’ The black press has been the subject of several recent books, including James McGrath Morris’ Biography…