As you may know, many of your confederate ancestors went home after fighting the Civil War to find their lives, as they had known them, changed forever. Plantations and businesses had been burned to the ground. Unemployment among southerners was high and unable to continue to exploit Africans for free labor and without a representative government to appeal to, depression set in. The stolen wealth, to which the south had grown accustomed, like an abandoned cotton field, dried up. ... read more »

Every 10 years, the United States Census Bureau works to conduct an accurate count of the nation’s population, as provided for under the U.S. Constitution. This decennial count – which is currently underway – is one of our nation’s most inclusive civic activities, including every person living in the country, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, religion or citizenship. ... read more »

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” So reads the 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, the third of what came to be known as the Reconstruction amendments. ... read more »

“Harriet” the movie is a portrayal, based on the life of the legendary African American heroine.  It is not, nor is it intended to be a documentary of her remarkable life.  At times during the movie historical facts are noted on the screen.  Harriet Tubman lived for 91 years, this movie covers about 8 to 10 years of her life.  So we know there is much more to her life that we don’t see in the movie.  I pray the movie raises interest in Harriet Tubman, particularly among young people, many of whom had unfortunately never heard of Harriet Tubman.  ... read more »

Ahead of the first day of oral arguments in the Supreme Court case Comcast Corp. V. National Association of African American-Owned Media (NAAOM),Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43) led her colleagues in introducing a resolution that affirms the vital role that the Civil Rights Act of 1866– particularly Section 1981 of the Act – has played in prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity when making and enforcing business contracts. Should Comcast Corporation, the plaintiffs in the case, prevail at the Supreme Court, it will be nearly impossible for entrepreneurs, innovators, and creators of color who have been victims of racial discrimination to bring forth lawsuits and have their rights protected and enforced in a court of law. ... read more »

Indeed, for her, freedom meant more than seeking and finding a comfortable place in oppression and letting those who would and could follow you. That is why, having escaped form enslavement, she could only feel free and happy for a brief while and was thus compelled to turn around and bring all she could out of bondage so that they could enjoy the collective and inclusive freedom both she and they needed. For she tells us that all the people she loved and knew and who suffered and longed for freedom were back in the belly of the beast, fighting daily against the deadening, debilitating and acidicly corrosive and erosive effects of the Holocaust of enslavement, and she was determined and duty-bound to liberate them. ... read more »

"Before this website, it was impossible to search the web and find an accurate scope of the history of American lynching. The names have always been kept safe but distant, in old archives and scholarly books and dissertations. This site leaves the record open for all Americans, especially high school students who want to learn more than what their textbook has to say,” the site’s authors wrote. ... read more »

This is a direct appeal to Governor Newsom, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and our entire state legislature. I’m writing this on behalf of the more than 20 African American-owned newspapers that operate in cities and towns across California. ... read more »

  This is a direct appeal to Governor Gavin Newsom, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and our entire state legislature. I’m writing this on behalf of the more than 20 African American-owned newspapers that operate in cities and towns across California. ... read more »

If the U.S. has 35,000 museums, a writer asked in 2014, why is only one about slavery? And if the wealth of this country was built on the backs of enslaved people from Africa, why has that story been vastly under-reported in our media, in our schools and in our political discourse? ... read more »

The celebration started with the freed slaves of Galveston, Texas. Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the South in 1863, it could not be enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865. ... read more »

Have you ever noticed that when driving through the southern United States you are hard-pressed to find a city or town without a memorial to the Confederate war dead, but you are equally hard-pressed to find a city or town with a monument commemorating fallen Revolutionary War soldiers? ... read more »

“With the racial divide stoked by President Donald Trump’s racial bias, the need for some healing among the races is a progressive and necessary policy and redress and reparations promote this healing so that we can move toward a less factionalized, less racially divided country,” Minami said. ... read more »

This is in joyful and grateful homage to our illustrious foremother, Harriet Tubman, in this month of her transition and ascension, March 10, 1913. We offer sacred words and water to this leader and liberator, this all-seasons soldier, abolitionist, freedom fighter, strategist, teacher, nurse, advocate of human, civil and women’s rights, and this family woman: daughter of her parents and people, sister, wife, mother and aunt. At the heart, center and core of the life, work and struggle of Harriet Tubman is her focus on freedom. It is from the outset an inclusive and indivisible freedom: the collective practice of self-determination in and for community. Thus, it is not enough for her to free herself, for that to her was only an escape from the immediate bondage of the devilish enslaver and the radically evil system they built and maintained. And it was not enough to have crossed a line that in most minds meant leaving the land of bondage and entering the land of “freedom” and forgetting those left behind. ... read more »

Those who feel America is a post-racial society tend to be either die-hard conservatives   or so naïve, they might believe there are snow-capped mountains in Florida.  But by any measure, public education, the criminal injustice system, poverty, etc., White privilege and its cohort racism, remain the prime barriers to Blacks receiving actual justice and equality.  ... read more »