slavery

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  4/14/2021
  

  My Ancestors Were Enslaved—But Their Freedom Came at a Price for Others

  by Alaina E. Roberts

  Historian Alaina Roberts' work grew out of a family history in which her ancestors were brought to Indian Territory as slaves of Cherokee masters expelled from the southeast, then became landowners as the government erased tribal control of land. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/13/2021
  

  Stacey Abrams’s Fight against Voter Suppression Dates Back to the Revolution

  by Karen Cook Bell

  "The roots of Black women’s activism can be traced back to the Revolutionary Era, when thousands of Black women protested with their feet and ran away from their enslavers." This act would shape the demands of radical Black politics in the ensuing decades.

• 
• SOURCE: UVA Today
  4/7/2021
  

  A Closer Look at the Design and Details of the New Memorial to Enslaved Laborers

  "We know so much about Jefferson – we even know what he ate on July 3, 1803 – but he and all those at UVA were surrounded for over 65 years by a community of more than 4,000 people that we know little about."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/7/2021
  

  Why Republican Efforts to Ban the 1619 Project from Classrooms are so Misguided

  by Seth Rockman

  "Ultimately the deep concern about the 1619 Project’s truth-telling concerning the American past is not that it puts patriotism at risk, but rather that it jeopardizes particular versions of the American future," including a recent Heritage Foundation report that is mostly concerned that the 1619 project will lessen the appeal of libertarian capitalism. 

• 
• SOURCE: HuffPost
  3/31/2021
  

  Slavery ‘Not Just About Profit And Suffering’, UK Government-Backed Race Report Claims

  A new UK government report on the teaching of the history of slavery and empire has controversially suggested that the institution was an exchange of cultures between British and enslaved African and colonized people, further fueling the British culture war over the teaching of history.

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/1/2021
  

  Higher Education's Racial Reckoning Reaches Far Beyond Slavery

  by Davarian L. Baldwin

  American universities have grown in harmony with American racism throughout their history, from building on land appropriated from Native Americans to accommodating Jim Crow to promoting social science theories that justified segregation and directly encouraging gentrification through real estate purchasing. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  4/5/2021
  

  Remembering is Resistance

  by Jessica M. Parr

  Books by Ana Lucia Araujo and Joan Wallach Scott examine the politics of memory and history and explain the stakes of fights over teaching and memorializing oppression. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/30/2021
  

  Maryland’s State Song, a Nod to the Confederacy, Nears Repeal

  "Maryland, My Maryland" was written by a Confederate sympathizer in 1861 and has come under scrutiny in recent years for its characterization of the Union army as a force of tyranny and call for listerners to fight for the Confederacy. 

• 
• 3/28/2021
  

  America Does Have an "Original Sin": A Response to James Goodman

  by Joshua Ward Jeffery

  "Original Sin" is a fit metaphor for longstanding inequities in American society, but it's important to understand that the original sin is settler colonialism and the seizure of indigenous land, which American civic religion has been all too willing to accommodate. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/15/2021
  

  Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales

  "The move by the leaders of the Jesuit conference of priests represents the largest effort by the Roman Catholic Church to make amends for the buying, selling and enslavement of Black people, church officials and historians said."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  3/20/2021
  

  Why Did the Slave Trade Survive So Long?

  by James Oakes

  James Oakes reviews John Harris's new book "The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage," and praises its insight into the late years of the slave trade and slavery's relationship to capitalism. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/18/2021
  

  Napoleon Isn’t a Hero to Celebrate

  by Marlene Daut

  The veneration of Napoleon on the 200th anniversary of his death reflects a systemic problem in French education, which touts the color-blind universality of French republicanism (which Napoleon destroyed) without acknowedging his policy of attempted genocide in the effort to retake control of Haiti. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/12/2021
  

  An Honest History of Texas Begins and Ends With White Supremacy

  by Casey Michel

  Amanda Vickery of the University of North Texas says that recent proposals in the Texas legislature for a curriculum of Texas patriotism won't acknowledge the way that slavery and white supremacy were central to the Republic of Texas. 

• 
• SOURCE: YouTube
  3/4/2021
  

  The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti

  by National History Center

  Professor Brandon Byrd's talk to the National History Center is now viewable online. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  3/7/2021
  

  Trinity College Reckons with Slavery Links as Ireland Confronts Collusion with Empire

  Dublin's Trinity College is undertaking a review of its institutional ties to slavery, a project that involves acknowledging the participation of Irish merchants in the Atlantic slave trade. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  3/1/2021
  

  Colleges Confront their Links to Slavery and Wrestle with How to Atone for Past Sins

  by Calvin Schermerhorn

  If colleges which exploited the labor of enslaved people in the past are interested in rectifying injustice, they should advocate for significant reforms that make higher education truly affordable for more African Americans. 

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  3/2/2021
  

  Mock Slave Auctions, Racist Lessons: How US History Class Often Traumatizes, Dehumanizes Black Students

  Experts acknowledge that teaching the history of slavery as a brutal and dehumanizing system is difficult. The persistence of assignments that impose humiliation on students shows more work is needed. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/24/2021
  

  Cherokee Nation Addresses Bias Against Descendants of Enslaved People

  The decision by tribal authorities was a significant step toward resolving the issues created by prior decisions to exclude the descendants of Black people enslaved by members of the Cherokee nation from full citizenship privileges. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/26/2021
  

  University Finds 18th-Century Schoolhouse Where Black Children Learned to Read

  The discovery of a 260-year-old structure with such a deep connection to a little-known chapter of the history of Colonial Williamsburg, when the population was more than 50 percent Black and teaching slaves to read was legal, is especially significant, said history professor Jody Lynn Allen. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  2/28/2021
  

  A Chapter In U.S. History Often Ignored: The Flight Of Runaway Slaves To Mexico

  USC Historian Alice Baumgartner's book examines the stream of enslaved people who fled to Mexico between the 1830s and Emancipation, and the role of Mexico in international debates about abolition. Roseann Bacha-Garza of UT-Rio Grande Valley is an expert on the local networks of abolitionists and allies on the route.