slavery

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  2/24/2021
  

  I Couldn't Unlearn the Name of My Great-Great-Grandfather's Enslaved Person — And I Didn't Want To

  by Ann Banks

  "It is one thing to recognize systemic racism and to agitate for a more just and anti-racist society. Yet it is something else truly to open yourself to the heart-stopping details, the specific horror of kidnapping a 2-year-old child, a child whose name I know."

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

  After the Riot, What’s the Future of Art in the Capitol?

  Art Historian Sarah Lewis suggests that damage to the artworks in the Capitol during the rioting presents an opportunity to rethink what subjects are included in a collection that signals inclusion in the national narrative. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  2/24/2021
  

  A Poisonous Legacy: New York City and the Persistence of the Middle Passage

  by Gerald Horne

  Historian Gerald Horne reviews John Harris's book on the role of New York merchants in the illegal last phase of the Atlantic slave trade, which persisted despite the law because trade in human beings enriched Americans throughout the nation. 

• 
• SOURCE: WAMC
  2/17/2021
  

  Behind The Former Slave Narratives Captured By A New Deal Program

  Writer Clint Smith: "the narratives are full of those moments that remind you of the personhood of these people who in so much of our teaching of history are sort of these silhouettes or these abstractions."

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/18/2021
  

  How a Mass Suicide by Slaves Caused the Legend of the Flying African to Take Off

  by Thomas Hallock

  A major trope of African American folklore converted an ill-fated effort at escape into a tale of freedom. Though the "flying Africans" story has been told and recorded throughout the African diaspora in the Americas, St. Simons Island, Georgia, is the home of the myth. 

• 
• 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: New York Times
  2/16/2021
  

  John C. Calhoun: Protector of Minorities?

  by Andrew Delbanco

  Robert Elder's biography of Calhoun examines the racist and pro-slavery thought of the legislator and his political afterlife. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/9/2021
  

  Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It

  by Clint Smith

  "The Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narratives produced tens of thousands of pages of interviews and hundreds of photographs—the largest, and perhaps the most important, archive of testimony from formerly enslaved people in history."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/7/2021
  

  He Became the Nation’s Ninth Vice President. She was His Enslaved Wife

  Historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers examines the erasure of Julia Chinn, the enslaved wife of Kentuckian Richard Mentor Johnson. 

• 
• SOURCE: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
  2/6/2021
  

  For American Racism, Slavery was Only the Beginning

  by James Brewer Stewart

  The Abolitionist Wendell Phillips would tell Americans today to cease arguing about the role of slavery in the founding and confront contemporary inequality as a product of ongoing political choices. 

• 
• 1/24/2021
  

  Misremember the Alamo

  by Douglas Sackman

  Like most Americans, when Trump tries to "remember the Alamo," he gets it all wrong. His recent visit to Alamo, Texas was 240 miles south of the mission so holy to many Texans, but it was closer in spirit than Trump probably realized. 

• 
• 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: New York Times
  1/12/2021
  

  Review: Was the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?

  by Gordon S. Wood

  Gordon Wood says James Oakes's new book examines the dialectical relationship between 19th century interpretations of the Constitution as a pro-slavery and anti-slavery document and argues that that debate steered Lincoln toward a commitment to racial equality as inextricable from abolition.

• 
• SOURCE: Medium
  1/4/2020
  

  Who was Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Why Does He Matter Now?

  by Julia Gaffield

  The anniversary of Haitian independence is occasion to rethink the legacy of the nation's first head of state, the uncompromising opponent of slavery and colonialism Jean-Jacques Dessalines. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mississippi Today
  12/29/2020
  

  University of Mississippi Professors Research Legacy of Slavery at State’s Flagship University

  A multidisciplinary task force of scholars at the University of Mississippi is working to tell the stories of people enslaved at the university and examine the role of slavery in building the institution. 

• 
• SOURCE: WDET
  12/31/2020
  

  Michigan State University Launches Online Database Chronicling North-Atlantic Slave Trade

  Enslaved.org is a searchable database that contains millions of records representing enslaved Africans and their descendants.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  1/3/2021
  

  ‘Cancel Culture’ is Not the Preserve of the Left. Just Ask Our Historians

  by David Olusoga

  British media has enthusiastically demonized historians whose work challenges myths of national glory by focusing on slavery and colonialism. 

• 
• 12/20/2020
  

  Defending the 1619 Project in the Context of History Education Today

  by Alan J. Singer

  Critics of the 1619 project may dispute particular claims or interpretations, but an understanding of the minimal attention devoted to slavery and its legacies in secondary school curricula shows that the project is badly needed. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/9/2020
  

  The Founder of Johns Hopkins Owned Enslaved People. Our University Must Face a Reckoning

  by Martha S. Jones

  "This year, so many of us at Johns Hopkins have taken pride in being affiliated with our colleagues in medicine and public health who have brilliantly confronted the coronavirus pandemic. That pride, for me, now mixes with bitterness."