“If we want to be on the right side of history, then America — the city of Tulsa — needs to make it right,” Tiffany Crutcher, a native of the Oklahoma city that was the site of a deadly race massacre more than a century ago, recently told Capital B. But things won’t be made […]
History
Posted inHistory
Inside the Battle to Preserve the Legacy of Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’
It’s time — past time — that Tulsa’s historic Greenwood neighborhood be granted national monument status, said Tiffany Crutcher, a native of the Oklahoma city that more than a century ago was the site of a white supremacist massacre. Her hope is that the district, known as “Black Wall Street,” will soon secure that history-honoring […]
Posted inEducation, History, Politics & Policy
Revisiting Brown v. Board of Education’s Legacy in a New Era of Massive Resistance
Exactly 70 years after some of the greatest Black legal minds in the U.S. challenged racial segregation in public schools, the assault on diversity in the classroom and beyond is gaining fresh momentum. Black students have long been subtly pushed out of schools thanks to disciplinary policies with roots in widespread resistance to desegregation efforts. […]
Posted inHistory, Policing, Politics & Policy
Gaza, Student Protest, and the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
Looking at the images might make you feel as if you’ve stepped back in time. Late on Tuesday, New York City police clad in riot gear entered Columbia University and removed dozens of peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators, leading them away with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Over the past week, hundreds of college students calling […]
Posted inHistory, Politics & Policy
Black Residents Battle Against Tennessee GOP’s Effort to Ban Reparations
The Rev. Earle J. Fisher, an activist and longtime resident of Memphis, Tennessee, is battling against yet another assault on Black economic and political progress by state Republicans. Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, these efforts have ramped up, particularly in majority-Black Shelby County, the largest county in the state. Just last month, […]
Posted inHistory, Politics & Policy
Daring to Be Bold: Examining Shirley Chisholm’s Everlasting Impact
When Kimberly Peeler-Allen was in the fourth grade, she had to pick someone to research for Women’s History Month. Her mother had a thought: Why not Shirley Chisholm? For Peeler-Allen, 47, the link was personal. Like Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black candidate to seek a major political party’s […]
Posted inCulture, History, Rural Issues
The Fight to Protect One of America’s Last Historic Black Communities
ROYAL, Florida — The calmness of the wind reverberated across the burial ground as Beverly Steele motioned to her mother’s grave in Oak Hill Cemetery. Three months ago, they buried her here, just 12 days shy of her 102nd birthday. It’s not uncommon for residents in the majority-Black, unincorporated community of Royal, Florida, to live […]
Posted inCulture, History, Rural Issues
A Florida Community Faces Erasure. Residents Are Honoring Its History.
If you ask any native, they all know the history of Royal, Florida, mostly because they are living descendants of it. As 67-year-old minister Janice Rivers put it: “There was not one corner that you could go to where the individuals didn’t know each other’s names or their history. You could talk to the elders […]
Posted inCulture, History, Partner Content
‘Opera Has Never Been White’: The Invisible Legacy of Black Women in Classical Music
Originally published by The 19th It was 1781 when a 14-year-old girl made her debut as an opera soloist in Saint-Domingue, the former French colony now called Haiti. She was a free person of color, the first person of African descent to star as the soloist in a French opera, and soon became the main […]
Posted inCulture, History
Biddy Mason Helped Build Downtown Los Angeles. Her Descendants Want You To Learn More.
This story originally published in 2024. Cheryl Cox was in the fourth grade when she spotted her “Grandma Biddy’s” name printed on a page of a textbook. The information was short, incomplete, and placed along the book’s spine as if the real estate mogul who helped build downtown Los Angeles was an afterthought. Prior to […]