News

"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

— James Baldwin

Background image: Linotype operators at the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper, in Chicago, Illinois. April 1941. Library of Congress.
Image credit:
Linotype operators at the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper, in Chicago, Illinois. April 1941. Library of Congress.

News

October 17, 2019

BU Today

When former NAACP CEO and president Cornell William Brooks was taunted with fried chicken and threatened with shouts of the N-word during a 43-day march in 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, he was undeterred.

USA Today

Why isn’t Angela part of colonial history lessons? Why, 400 years later, are they just hearing her story?

“What if now is the time we are supposed to know about Angela?” Valarie tells Kaid.  Maybe now the country is finally ready to acknowledge Angela’s importance – as the first African woman in Jamestown for whom there is a name and a story.

October 13, 2019

The Cavalier Daily

The University announced Friday that it has established the Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity Through Community-Engaged Scholarship. Referred to as the Equity Center, the project will promote partnerships between faculty and community members, so that the University may better support the Charlottesville community and address issues of racial and socioeconomic disparity.

October 12, 2019

WDVM

BETHESDA, Md. (WDVM) — A West African king makes his first visit to Montgomery County to commemorate 400 years since slavery began. All the way from Benin, Royal Majesty King Toffa IX makes history as he visits Montgomery County. “Royal Majesty King Toffa IX has come this way, all the way from Porto Novo,” Rev. Adebayo stated.

October 11, 2019

The New York Times

The Provosts, a family of sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana, had worked the same land for generations. When it became harder and harder to keep hold of that land, June Provost and his wife, Angie, didn’t know why — and then a phone call changed their understanding of everything.

On today’s episode:

  • June and Angie Provost spoke with Adizah Eghan and Annie Brown, producers for “1619.”

  • Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard University and the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness.”

OperaWire

Composer and pianist Damien Sneed is set to showcase his new opera “Our Journey: 400 Years From Africa to Jamestown,” at Carnegie Hall on Friday, Oct. 11, 2019.

The world premiere performance will star mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and baritone Will Liverman alongside the Chorus Le Chateau and the Sphinx Virtuosi Orchestra.

October 10, 2019

WVXU

Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati are studying how its institutions were built on slavery. Higher education representatives from across the country are in Cincinnati this week for "The Academy's Original Sin," a conference exploring the past and present racial inequities in higher education that date back to slavery. Enslavers founded both Xavier and UC, which are hosting the conference.

October 4, 2019

WDRB

A new justice movement grown through social media planted roots Friday in Louisville in an effort to address the barbaric act of slavery and repay the ancestors of those who were shackled and abused generations ago. 

The New York Times

More than a century and a half after the promise of 40 acres and a mule, the story of black land ownership in America remains one of loss and dispossession. June and Angie Provost, who trace their family line to the enslaved workers on Louisiana’s sugar-cane plantations, know this story well.

On today’s episode:

  • June and Angie Provost spoke with Adizah Eghan and Annie Brown, producers for “1619.”

October 3, 2019

Essence

Danielle Kwateng-Clark considers her own rich cultural heritage as a child of the African diaspora on her revolutionary return home to Ghana. 

In Maya Angelou’s autobiography, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, she describes the revelatory experience of moving to Ghana in 1962 for three years. 

Berkeley News

During the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to the English colonies, we’re highlighting members of the campus community whose personal stories, often marked by racism and discrimination, inform their life’s work. We begin with Tina Sacks, UC Berkeley assistant professor of social welfare, who tells of the struggles, self-determination and achievements of her African American and Jewish ancestors.

October 2, 2019

BK Reader

This year, 2019, marks 400 years since the arrival of the first 20 Africans to North America’s shores. They arrived at Jamestown, VA, in 1619 and were sold into slavery. 

And from that time until 1866, 12.5 million more Africans were shipped to the New World (10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage), disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

BBC

Charleston reflects a wholly American truth: that nothing here is untouched by the legacy of slavery, even centuries on. What is less certain is how a city - and a nation - should talk about such a difficult past. "We do things a little bit differently than they do at other plantations in Charleston, because we do focus our perspective on the enslaved people," Olivia Williams tells our group. "What we're going to talk about today is hard," she continues. "You may feel uncomfortable. You may feel upset, sad or angry, and that is perfectly fine.

October 1, 2019

Bushwick Daily

The October lecture series will feature talks, screenings and plays on redlining, the criminal justice system, reparations and more. “There is this unhealed wound in our history that impacts our present-day society deeply in every way,” said Marcia Ely, Brooklyn Historical Society’s executive vice president.  BHS wants to acknowledge the United States’ unresolved legacy of slavery and its long-lasting effects.

September 30, 2019

Architectural Digest

Kehinde Wiley is a maven at making a major statement. Barack Obama’s official portraitist (he was the president’s personal choice for the painting that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery) has just created another first: a larger-than-life public art work—a towering bronze equestrian statue—that was spirited into New York’s Times Square in the wee hours of the night, shrouded in a silver drape until its unveiling, complete with a marching band, on September 27. 

September 27, 2019

Tulane University

Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine will bring together scholars, activists and community members for a day-long event observing the 400-year anniversary of the beginning of slavery in America and exploring its lasting impact on inequalities for communities across the country.

September 25, 2019

The Hilltop

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) hosted its 49th Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center from Sept. 11-15. Although it is linked to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan arm that runs programs in economic development, education and public health. The black caucus is made up of congressional members from the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. All 55 of the members share the same legislative goal: the advancement of African-Americans. 

September 22, 2019

The Virginian-Pilot

Virginia has spent much of the year commemorating historic events of 1619, including the landing of the first Africans in an English North American colony.

A three-day conference at Norfolk State University this week will examine what evolved after 1619, including how the legal system, at times, granted and denied citizenship to certain Americans, and how people of color have often been negatively portrayed in history books and movies.

September 20, 2019

Science

Over centuries of slavery in America, systematic structures were erected to present enslaved people as “the other”—a race apart and less than human—as a way to justify the institution and forestall discussions of its inhumanity and the moral imperative to dismantle it. These efforts included invoking science, as objective arbiter, in support of these viewpoints. Some theories of human origins, for example, espoused by great names of science, reflected attempts to bolster constructs of racial inferiority rather than to advance science.

September 18, 2019

BET

Determined to live free, Harriet Tubman tried more than once to escape slavery. In 1849, she seized an opportunity.

Hiding by day and traveling by night, Tubman stealthily journeyed through her native Maryland, then Delaware and, finally, Pennsylvania.