History News Network

Black History

Originally published 02/26/2015
Why Hollywood’s Diversity Problem Can’t Just Be Solved with Fancy Award Ceremonies and Gold Statues

For most of its history, Hollywood has worked hard to identify—and undermine—the work of black actors and filmmakers.

Originally published 02/26/2015
The move accelerates to show that black people have a history

Wikipedia Foundation has partnered with institutions such as Washington's Howard University to ensure that black people have a history, Wikipedia style.

Originally published 02/18/2015
Carter G. Woodson, The Father of Black History Month

Its origins date back to 1926, when a historian named Carter G. Woodson spearheaded “Negro History Week.”

Originally published 02/16/2015
This Is What’s Missing from Black History Month

The trivialization of black history – reducing the movement to MLK and Rosa Parks – denies young people their rightful awareness of Jim Crow racism’s systemic nature.

Originally published 02/16/2015
New lynching report documents an era of racial terrorism

Lynching in America makes the case that lynching of African Americans was terrorism, a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial subordination and segregation.

Originally published 02/11/2015
South Carolina’s Brilliant Idea for Black History Month: Close a Historically Black College!

On Tuesday, February 11, 2015, the state House of Representatives budget panel voted to close the South Carolina State University for two years, leaving students adrift.

Originally published 02/11/2015
When a City Turns White, What Happens to Its Black History?

Case Study: Decatur, Georgia

Originally published 02/10/2015
MLK's Mother Was Assassinated, Too: The Forgotten Women Of Black History Month

“Well, we don’t study it that much because there’s no such thing.”

Originally published 02/10/2015
The cost of passing for white when you were black

At first glance, passing appears to be a deeply individualistic practice, but it was often, intentionally or involuntarily, a collaborative phenomenon.

Originally published 02/09/2015
Black History Month doesn’t name white supremacy and unwittingly facilitates it

Learning tales of black exceptionalism, and contrasting them to the stereotypes of lazy slaves and indebted sharecroppers, underscores ongoing racial divides

Originally published 06/25/2014
Remarkable video interviews keep black history alive

2,600 African-Americans took part in the project - some famous, and some who would become famous.

Originally published 04/01/2014
How Many ‘White’ People Are Passing?

4 percent of whites have at least 1 percent or more of African ancestry.

Originally published 01/23/2014
The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard

“Washes and razors for foofoos," scoffed Walt Whitman. But the story of nineteenth-century facial hair is more tangled than modern nostalgists may realize.

Originally published 11/19/2013
A Lesson From Cuba on Race

The Cuban answer to racial injustice actually worked.

Originally published 11/13/2013
The Kennedys and Martin Luther King

King and the Kennedys remain important symbols of the power of hope and the promise of a just democracy.

Originally published 11/12/2013
JFK holds complex place in black history

The slain president remains an African American icon, despite dragging his feet on civil rights.

Originally published 11/06/2013
How Diversity Will Alter Black History

Will there still be a need for Black History Month?

Originally published 03/26/2013
The Truth Behind '40 Acres and a Mule'

We've all heard the story of the "40 acres and a mule" promise to former slaves. It's a staple of black history lessons, and it's the name of Spike Lee's film company. The promise was the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves, and it was astonishingly radical for its time, proto-socialist in its implications. In fact, such a policy would be radical in any country today: the federal government's massive confiscation of private property -- some 400,000 acres -- formerly owned by Confederate land owners, and its methodical redistribution to former black slaves. What most of us haven't heard is that the idea really was generated by black leaders themselves....

Originally published 02/27/2013
Rosa Parks statue set to be unveiled at Capitol

Rosa Parks is famous for her 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a city bus in Alabama to a white man, but there's plenty about the rest of her experiences that she deliberately withheld from her family. While Parks and her husband, Raymond, were childless, her brother, the late Sylvester McCauley, had 13 children. They decided Parks' nieces and nephews didn't need to know the horrible details surrounding her civil rights activism, said Rhea McCauley, Parks' niece....

Originally published 02/27/2013
Rosa Parks statue unveiled at Capitol

President Barack Obama says civil rights icon Rosa Parks has taken her rightful place among those who have shaped the course of U.S. history.Obama and House Speaker John Boehner unveiled a statue of Parks in a ceremony at the Capitol. Parks becomes the first black woman to be honored with a full-length statue in the Capitol's Statuary Hall.A bust of another black woman, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, sits in the Capitol Visitors Center.Obama says the nation learned from Parks that there is always something we can do to improve the future...

Originally published 02/05/2013
Postal Service honors Rosa Parks with new stamp

Hundreds of people, including some of Michigan's political elite, gathered Monday to celebrate the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in her honor steps from the Alabama bus on which she stared down segregation nearly 60 years ago.Parks, who died in 2005, became one of the enduring figures of the Civil Rights movement when she refused to cede her seat in the colored section of the Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man after the whites-only section filled up. Her defiance and the ensuing black boycott of the city bus system helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national prominence...The Parks stamp is the second in a set of civil rights stamps being issued this year by the U.S. Postal Service.USPS launched the series Jan. 1 with the Emancipation Proclamation Forever Stamp, which was issued at The National Archives in Washington. In August, the series will culminate with the dedication of a stamp recognizing the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington...

Originally published 01/18/2009
Is This the Black Activist Everybody Forgot?

There is a growing interest in Hubert Harrison, the race- and class-conscious “intellectual giant” of the World War I era.