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 […]
History
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 […]
Posted inHistory
Black and Indigenous Activists Unite to Eradicate Racist Landmarks
The waters in and around the United States have had a long history of claiming Black life since the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Along the Kansas and Missouri border, a small, unassuming creek is a part of this lineage, researchers say. For years, Johnson County, Kansas, residents believed the Big Negro Creek that cut through their […]
Posted inCulture, History
One Family’s Quest for Reparations: ‘We Owe it Gracie’
Candice Hammons’ curiosity about the history of the maternal side of her close-knit family unearthed a mystery along Texas’ Neches River. It all started with a simple ancestry test in 2018. Her niece had just completed a DNA kit from 23andMe and her excitement was contagious. For Hammons, it wasn’t just about learning where she […]
Posted inCulture, History
How to Find the Roots of Your Family Tree
From the inception of the United States, Black families have been displaced and ripped apart. It’s been difficult to track Black lineage because of limited data and written documents that erased Black folks. Over the years, and more recently, descendants have uncovered their histories, which have led to reclaiming stolen land, holding onto historical land, […]