African American history 
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
5/30/2023
Determined to Remember: Harriet Jacobs and Slavery's Descendants
by Koritha Mitchell
Public history sites have the potential to spark intellectual engagement because when they make embodied connections between people and the sites they visit—even when those connections evoke the cruelty of the past.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
5/31/2023
Commemoration of the Tulsa Massacre Has Put Symbolism Over Justice for the Victims
by Victor Luckerson
"The neighborhood’s historical fame has become a kind of albatross slung over Black Tulsans’ necks, as efforts at building concrete pathways toward justice are buried under hollow symbolism."
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SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
5/30/2023
The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
by Brentin Mock
Victor Luckerson looks to the aftermath of the deadly attacks on the Greenwood district to argue that Tulsa's white leadership, in combination with federal highway and urban renewal programs, thwarted the efforts of Black Tulsans who were determined to rebuild.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
5/23/2023
Scholars Stage Teach-in on Racism in DeSantis's Back Yard
Yohuru Williams and the Institute for Common Power, directed by Terry Anne Scott, convened a 24-hour teach-in in St. Petersburg to draw attention to the connections between inclusive history lessons and functioning democracy.
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SOURCE: WBUR
5/23/2023
Massachusetts-Based Historians: Book Bans in Florida Affect Us, Too
Kellie Carter Jackson and Kerri Greenidge explain how the push to restrict books and teaching on racism in Florida will affect teaching even in blue states.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/19/2023
For the Shakurs, Black Liberation Became the Family Business
Santi Elijah Holley traces the lines connecting Afeni Shakur's Black Panther Party activism to the musical and political messages of her son Tupac.
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SOURCE: The Nation
5/22/2023
If Football is America's Religion, Jim Brown was its Leading Saint
Dave Zirin, a Brown biographer, says that the hall of famer's complicated politics, advocacy for players in the pre-union era, and mistreatment of women all demand treating his life as a subject of study, not veneration.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/22/2023
Dept. of Ed Charges Georgia Book Removal May Violate Civil Rights
A review by the department's civil rights unit concludes that Forsyth County, Georgia may have created a hostile learning environment for Black and LGBTQ students through its book removal policies.
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SOURCE: CNN
5/15/2023
I'm Headed to Florida to Teach-In Against DeSantis's Education Policies
by Kellie Carter Jackson
This May 17 saw a 24-hour teach-in by historians in St. Petersburg, Florida, to protest the restrictions on curriculum, books and ideas pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis and his allies. As a historian of abolition, the author stresses that denying people the pen may influence them to pick up the sword.
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SOURCE: WNYC
5/18/2023
What Does Clarence Thomas Think Clarence Thomas is Doing?
A panel of scholars and journalists examine a paradox: how Clarence Thomas went from embracing the tenets of Black Nationalism to an administrative and judicial career that most characterize as hostile to the rights of Black Americans.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/16/2023
Black San Franciscans Have Been Leaving—Could Reparations Bring them Back?
A city commission has issued non-binding advisory recommendations for extensive cash reparations to Black residents and their families who were pushed out of now-valuable property through urban renewal. It's not likely that the local government will implement any of them, so activists are trying to help make housing more affordable.
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SOURCE: CNN
4/15/2023
Could Alex Haley's False Quotation of MLK Have Changed History?
by Peniel E. Joseph
By exaggerating the conflict between Martin and Malcolm, Haley helped feed a narrative of the two men's approaches to politics as irreconcilable instead of as facets of a more complex struggle for freedom. It has probably helped to push radical demands for justice to the margins.
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SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
5/10/2023
What a White Man Learned Selling a Black History Encyclopedia Door to Door in 1971
by Jonathan Odell
"What DeSantis and his ilk now fear, is that we the people, Black and white, hold the missing pieces to each other’s stories, and once our stories are told, they can change us profoundly."
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5/14/2023
Brandon Johnson Built a Coalition to Win in Chicago. Can He Keep it to Govern?
by Gordon K. Mantler
When Brandon Johnson takes office on Monday as Chicago's mayor, he will experience the same challenge that his political predecessor Harold Washington did in 1983: turning a winning electoral coalition into a durable governing coalition. It won't be easy, but progressive change in the city depends on it.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/10/2023
Alex Haley Fabricated Quotes Portraying MLK as Implacable Critic of Malcolm X, Biographer Finds
by Gillian Brockell
Jonathan Eig tracked down a secretary's transcript of writer Alex Haley's interview with Martin Luther King and found that Haley seriously misrepresented King's response to Malcolm's militant approach to the Black freedom struggle, contributing to longstanding misunderstanding of King's views and relationship to other political factions.
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SOURCE: Miami New Times
5/4/2023
Florida History Professor's Nonprofit will Distribute Banned Books
"We will not allow DeSantis to kill our history," says Marvin Dunn. "We just won't allow it. We will take our history directly to the parents if that's what's required, and apparently, it is what is required."
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/6/2023
State Advisory Panel on Reparations Calls for Payments to Black Californians; Legislative Response Unclear
The task force's report has placed a cash value on harms suffered by Black Californians from state policies that excluded them from the Golden State's prosperity, ranging from redlining to the war on drugs and mass imprisonment.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
5/6/2023
Chad L. Williams on DuBois's Unfinished "Wounded World"
A DuBois biographer discusses the work of tracing the great intellectual's life and work, and the experience of reading an unpublished and unfinished manuscript.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
4/25/2023
The United States Colored Troops Killed at Olustee, Florida are Still Owed a Proper Burial
by Barbara A. Gannon
Why are the remains of members of the United States Colored Troop still interred in unmarked graves at the Civil War battlefield of Olustee, Florida, when the defenders of a treasonous rebellion on behalf of slavery are buried with honors?
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/26/2023
Emily Meggett, Preserver of Gullah Geechee Foodways of the Coastal South, Dies at 90
Mrs. Meggett cooked for decades for her family and church, and as a domestic worker for white families in South Carolina. Her book represents the work of many women who preserved food traditions passed from Africa through slavery and Jim Crow.
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