abolition

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  4/20/2022
  

  The Unbearable Whiteness of Ken Burns

  by Timothy Messer-Kruse

  In the context of today's battles over teaching the history of racism in America, the new Franklin documentary unfortunately uses its subject to spin a narrative of national self-correction that ignores historians' attention to conflict and struggle. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  4/19/2022
  

  T. Thomas Fortune: The Forgotten Founder of Abolition Democracy

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  T. Thomas Fortune's critique of Reconstruction is a radical intellectual document that has valuable lessons for the activists and scholars associated with the prison abolition movement. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/25/2022
  

  Linda Hirshman Offers a Lively Dissection of the Competing Strains of American Abolitionism

  by Drew Gilpin Faust

  Hirshman focuses on the complex character of abolitionist editor Maria Weston Chapman, whose combination of moral fervor and racial prejudice pushed Frederick Douglass from the moralistic Garrisonian camp to a pragmatic and more effective strategy of political activism. 

• 
• 3/6/2022
  

  How Lincoln and Douglass Joined Forces for Freedom

  by Jonathan W. White

  Lincoln's discussions with Frederick Douglass should make clear the difference between the president's public statements and his inner convictions on emancipation. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/2/2021
  

  Wilentz: New Book Says Jefferson Davis was Right About the Constitution. What About Lincoln?

  by Sean Wilentz

  Noah Feldman's new books says that, in 1861, Jefferson Davis was right about the Constitution's sanction of slavery, and only the rupture of the Civil War could amend and reset the document. Sean Wilentz disagrees. 

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  8/30/2021
  

  An American Conception of Justice

  by Michael Kazin

  While historians have demonstrated the racist operation of American institutions, it's important to recognize that those institutions have also been instruments for justice. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  7/22/2021
  

  Today It’s Critical Race Theory. 200 Years Ago It Was Abolitionist Literature

  In 1829, South Carolina and Georgia responded to a series of fires they assumed were set by enslaved people by banning both the abolitionist literature they blamed for inciting rebellion and the teaching of literacy to slaves. Today's battles over curriculum are likewise about ideas deemed threatening to social hierarchies.

• 
• 5/2/2021
  

  Elijah Lovejoy Faced Down Violent Mobs to Champion Abolition and the Free Press

  by Ken Ellingwood

  In 1837, Elijah Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob in Illinois, and the press he used to publish his abolitionist newsletter was thrown into the Mississippi River. Lovejoy's championing of both abolition and the free press should inspire us today. 

• 
• SOURCE: Civil War Memory
  2/2/2021
  

  Manipulating Frederick Douglass and His Historical Record

  by Kevin M. Levin

  Frederick Douglass intended his portraits as visual representations of freedom, autonomy and dignity. The author wonders if it's appropriate to take the liberty of indulging in the trendy photo animation technology with the portraits of historical figures. 

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  2/16/2021
  

  It's Time to Stop Calling Slavery America's 'Original Sin'

  by James Goodman

  The theological origins of "original sin" mean that the metaphor portrays slavery, racism, and the dispossession of Native American lands as evils foisted upon Americans, rather than as social and political products of choices made by them. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/10/2021
  

  A Forgotten Black Founding Father

  by Danielle Allen

  The figure of Black abolitionist Prince Hall has been discussed for his advocacy for abolition in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but there remains a deeper work of historical reconstruction to understand his connections to family, community and civil society in the founding era. 

• 
• SOURCE: Tropics of Meta
  1/13/2021
  

  Josh Hawley Is Not the First Missouri Senator with Blood on His Hands

  by Steven Lubet

  Senator Josh Hawley arguably helped incite a mob to invade the Capitol to thwart the certification of Biden's victory. Missouri's antebellum senator David Rice Atchison helped incite a civil war in Kansas in 1854. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Hill
  12/2/2020
  

  Democrats Introduce Legislation to Strike Slavery Exception in 13th Amendment

  The proposal would eliminate a loophole written into the 13th Amendment that allows involuntary servitude to be imposed on persons convicted of a crime. Some recent scholars have argued that this exemption is a foundation of the current system of mass incarceration. 

• 
• SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
  11/27/2020
  

  Wishbone of The Good Lord Bird

  by Mark Lause

  "In the end, The Good Lord Bird spins a worthwhile and entertaining yarn, but each episode starts with the unfortunate and misleading words: 'All of this is true.  Most of it happened'."

• 
• SOURCE: CBS News
  11/29/2020
  

  Finding the Last Ship Known to have Brought Enslaved Africans to America and the Descendants of its Survivors

  "The Clotilda was burned and sunk in an Alabama River after bringing 110 imprisoned people across the Atlantic in 1860. Two years ago, its remains were found."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/26/2020
  

  The Mischievous Irreverence of “The Good Lord Bird”

  “The Good Lord Bird” roots for Brown, but it has no patience for hagiography. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  10/19/2020
  

  John Brown And Abraham Lincoln: Divergent Paths In The Fight To End Slavery (audio)

  H.W. Brands discusses his new book "The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom" with NPR's Fresh Air. 

• 
• SOURCE: Confederates in My Closet
  10/6/2020
  

  Why the White Abolitionist Should Have Listened to the Black Abolitionist

  by Ann Banks

  In a rave review of the video series The Good Lord Bird, the New York Times proclaimed in its headline “the necessity of John Brown.”   As a muse, John Brown is having a moment. 

• 
• SOURCE: Fox News
  9/6/2020
  

  University Of Maryland Renames Women's Studies Department After Harriet Tubman

  The University of Maryland made the change to honr the hero of emancipation and reflect its commitment to teaching and scholarship about Black women's history.

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Gazette
  8/28/2020
  

  Crowd-Sourcing the Story of a People

  Tiya Miles is professor of history and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the new director of the Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard. She discusses the practice, teaching, and value of public history as "a boisterous, crowd-sourced endeavor."