African American history

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• SOURCE: WBUR
  1/17/2022
  

  Annette Gordon-Reed: Don't Accept "Cuddly" King Image

  The late leader's opposition to militarism, economic injustice, and white supremacy, which sustained a broad critique of capitalist society, have been sanitized and reduced to platitudes by people who would prefer not to recognize the equality of all people, the historian told the annual MLK Memorial Breakfast. 

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• 1/16/2022
  

  No Land, No Life: The Structure of Debilitating Black Land Loss in the South

  by Annelise Straw

  Despite pledges of aid by the Biden administration, access to credit remains an obstacle for African American farmers, who continue to face the loss of land and its attendant financial and emotional losses.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/11/2022
  

  The Indomitable Rev. Addie L. Wyatt

  by Kim Kelly

  After starting at Armour's Chicago cannery at age 17, Addie Wyatt rose through the ranks of her local union to lead workers across five states, recognizing the connection between workers' power and racial and gender equality and linking midwestern unions to the southern civil rights struggle. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/13/2022
  

  Sidney Poitier Set the Template for Barack Obama

  by Aram Goudsouzian

  Sidney Poitier's portrayals of characters whose self-contained charm, virtue and dignity obliterated previous racist stereotypes in film but also excluded the frustrations and anger of contemporary African Americans were a model for Barack Obama's campaign promise to heal America's racial wounds.

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/10/2022
  

  Art and the Free South

  "For the Free Southern Theater’s members, bringing the stage to the countryside made political education accessible while enabling artists to participate in politics."

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• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  1/5/2022
  

  Poetry and the Struggle for Justice

  by Paul Lewis

  "During the antebellum period, newspapers and magazines featured poems that advanced a wide range of causes, including women’s rights, peace, and temperance" – and abolition.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/9/2022
  

  Sidney Poitier Gave More than He was Given

  by Samantha N. Sheppard

  Sidney Poitier's gift and burden as an actor was to constantly deliver more than his scripts contained, pushing the limits of Black representation in Hollywood films. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/7/2022
  

  Nine Decades Later, Critics of DuBois's "Black Reconstruction" Rehash Old Claims

  by Martha S. Jones

  For a new wave of critics, it's 1935 all over again, proving the ongoing vitality of DuBois's pioneering work. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  1/5/2022
  

  Lawrence Brooks, Oldest Surviving WWII Veteran, Dies at 112

  "Throughout his service in Australia, Brooks enjoyed a level of freedom he'd never experienced before, either in the military or at home. In interviews with the National World War II Museum, he marveled over that country's acceptance of Black soldiers, which were a marked contrast to the racist Jim Crow laws of the south at the time."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/7/2022
  

  Sidney Poitier, First Black Man to Win Best Actor Oscar, Dies at 94

  The actor's performances reflected the social tensions at the rise of the Civil Rights movement, advancing beyond the caricatured and one-dimensional characters prior Black actors were given to play, and often embodying the tensions between moderate and militant factions of the Black freedom movement.

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  1/3/2021
  

  A Blueprint for Leadership from 1980s Chicago

  by Brentin Mock

  Harold Washington faced stiff resistance from his own party when he became Chicago's first Black mayor in 1983; his response stressing public infrastructure and voting rights foreshadowed the Biden administration's efforts to overcome intransigence and obstructionism. 

• 
• SOURCE: DCist
  12/30/2021
  

  Mosaic Theater Is Collecting H Street Residents’ Protest Stories And Turning Them Into Plays

  “We want to be a place where the stories of our community are uplifted and celebrated and given the spotlight — particularly because so many of those residents are African Americans who have seen so much change happen without their input,” says Reginald Douglas, Mosaic’s new artistic director.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  12/18/2021
  

  Ida B. Wells Became the Last Hope for 12 Men Convicted of False Charges During Elaine, Ark. Massacre

  "Did Wells, an unflinching woman who had traveled the country to investigate the ruthless barbarity of white mobs in other lynchings and massacres, have that much power to save these Black men on death row in Arkansas?"

• 
• SOURCE: MSNBC
  12/15/2021
  

  bell hooks Leaves Legacy of Feminist Thought Embracing and Embraced by Black Women

  by Anthea Butler

  "I’m among the generation of teachers who were influenced by her thinking and by her admonition that 'popular culture is where the pedagogy is, where the learning is'."

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• SOURCE: 10TampaBay
  12/12/2021
  

  USF's Aisha Durham Part of Smithsonian Curation Team for Anthology of Hip Hop and Rap

  Communications Professor Aisha Durham visited the Smithsonian as a young girl from Virginia, and felt like her African American peers were outsiders to American culture. She now works to highlight the ways that urban Black culture changed America through music, fashion, and other elements of hip hop culture. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  12/10/2021
  

  (Re)locating Sites of Memory in Appalachia Through Black Spaces and Stories

  by Kristan McCullum

  "I grew up in Jenkins not knowing its full history. I never knew the church I was raised in was once the movie theater that required Black patrons to sit in the balcony."

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  12/10/2021
  

  "When Harlem was in Vogue" at 40

  by Shane Graham

  "Because the book is, at its core, an institutional history, it probes deep behind the scenes of the Renaissance. Lewis focuses not just on the artists, but on the tireless efforts of a small group of people to promote and support those artists, and on the organizations and publications that made the whole movement possible."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/6/2021
  

  For Black Americans, Spaces of Sanctuary have been a Matter of Survival

  by Alicia K. Jackson

  "In reality, much of African American history is the story of Americans creating their own sense of sanctuary in a land that often seems antithetical to their presence and their needs."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  12/8/2021
  

  The 1619 Project and the Demands of Public History

  by Lauren Michele Jackson

  "In spite of all of the ugly evidence it has assembled, the 1619 Project ultimately seeks to inspire faith in the American project, just as any conventional social-studies curriculum would."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/6/2021
  

  Justice Department Closes Emmett Till Investigation Without Charges

  Historian Timothy Tyson wrote in a 2017 book that witness Carolyn Bryant Donham disavowed her testimony that Till had grabbed her and made suggestive remarks before he was lynched. The DOJ has said that materials given them by Tyson did not corroborate the claim of a recantation.