In the News
Frederick Douglass, Seen Up CloseJennifer Schuessler, July 3, 2020,
The New York Times
In
2006, the historian David Blight had just given a talk about Frederick
Douglass in Savannah, Ga., when he was introduced to Walter Evans, a
retired surgeon and collector. Dr. Evans invited him to stop by the
house and see his Douglass collection. Dr. Blight was cautiously
intrigued.
But later, as Dr. Evans began laying out some
carefully rebound scrapbooks on his dining room table, he was stunned to
see page after page of newspaper clippings, letters and personal
reminiscences of the escaped slave who became one of the most famous men
in 19th century America.
They were the Douglass family
scrapbooks, carefully assembled and annotated by Douglass’s sons — and
all but unknown to scholars.
“I was astonished,” Dr. Blight recalled in an interview. “I’m not even sure I knew what I was seeing at first.”
Dr. Evans put it a bit more vividly. “I could see David’s head exploding,” he said.
c…
One of America’s Wealthiest States Might Pass Up an Opportunity to Tackle Housing SegregationJacqueline Rabe Thomas, June 29, 2020,
ProPublica with
The Connecticut MirrorOn
a recent Sunday, protesters marched through the center of Weston, a
small, wealthy town in southwest Connecticut. They chanted “no justice,
no peace” and raised handwritten signs that read “Black Lives Matter”
and “Silence is Violence.”
Somewhere in the crowd, Brian Murray hoisted his own message.
“Fact
check: Weston, CT. No Black teachers. No Black police officers. No
Black board members. No Black town of Weston government office members.”
Murray, one of the town’s few Black residents, viewed the June 7 protest through a different lens than his white neighbors.
“It
was a photo opportunity. That’s all,” said Murray, a limo driver
and father of five who moved his family to the town eight years ago.
continueStorm clouds on the horizon for U.S. human trafficking rankingsLuis C.deBaca, 29 June 2020,
Thomson Reuters…
Archives Department acknowledges role in distorting Alabama’s racial historyMike Cason, Jun 23, 2020,
Alabama.comThe
Alabama Department of Archives & History said in a statement today
that for much of the 20th century it promoted a view of history that
favored the Confederacy and failed to document the lives and
contributions of Black Alabamians.
Archives & History
Director Steve Murray said he drafted the “Statement of Recommitment”
that was approved by the agency’s Board of Trustees. Read the statement.
“The
State of Alabama founded the department in 1901 to address a lack
of proper management of government records, but also to serve a
white southern concern for the preservation of Confederate history and
the promotion of Lost Cause ideals,” the statement says. “For well over a
half-century, the agency committed extensive resources to
the acquisition of Confederate records and artifacts while declining to
acquire and preserve materials documenting the lives and co…
After Years of Protest, Theodore Roosevelt Statue Will Be Removed From American Natural History MuseumHakim Bishara
An
internal memo to the museum’s staff over the weekend was the first to
announce the decision to remove the controversial statues on Central
Park West.
**
Let’s Remember How Dark Teddy Roosevelt’s History Was
Jon Schwarz - June 22, 2020 New York City’s American Museum of Natural History
announced
Sunday that it will remove its famous statue of President Teddy Roosevelt from its sidewalk entrance.
The museum’s president emphasized that the decision was made based on
the statue’s “hierarchical composition” — Roosevelt is on horseback,
flanked by an African man and a Native American man on foot — rather
than the simple fact that it portrayed Roosevelt.
The museum, co-founded by Roosevelt’s father, will keep Roosevelt’s name
on its Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda,
and Theodore Roosevelt Park.
This suggests that Americans still have not …
At Yale, piecing together John Wilson’s 1952 lynching muralMurray Whyte, June 11, 2020,
Boston Globe
In
1950, John Wilson and his wife, Julia, set out from Boston for Mexico
City in separate cars. Wilson had received a John Hay Whitney Fellowship
to immerse himself in the social-political Mexican Mural Renaissance
led by one of his idols, José Clemente Orozco. John and Julia were
newlyweds — he was Black, she white — enamored but apart on that long,
lonely road, and for very good reason: Their route took them through the
Deep South, where the Ku Klux Klan was pursuing with rising zeal the
vicious practice of lynching — the spectacle-murder of Black men and
women by white civilian mobs.
“It mattered that John’s wife was
white, and what that meant in terms of this narrative of mob violence,”
said Crystal Feimster, a professor of African American Studies at Yale,
and an expert on race- and gender-based violence. “He understood the
stakes. He knew that they could come for him.”
…
Vice President Calhoun was a slave owner and secessionist whose plantation became Clemson University; Tillman was a governor and white supremacist whose name adorns Clemson's most iconic building.
The Clemson University Board of Trustees has voted
to remove John C. Calhoun's name from the Honors College and has
requested the state Legislature to empower the school to rename Tillman
Hall to its original name, Old Main. In a
Friday morning vote, the board unanimously voted to remove Calhoun from
the Honors College as recommended by Provost Bob Jones. The college was
immediately rebranded The Clemson University Honors College.
Efforts like the ones to rename Clemson's Tillman
Hall or the USC's Women's Dorm, which is named after Marion Sims, a
scientist who performed surgery on enslaved women without consent, would
require the Legislature's vote, which is why the group is focusing
first on repealing the Heritage Act.
"I think
the bottom line for a lo…
Columbus and his actions set the foundation for the exploitation and destruction of the lands and peoples in the Western Hemisphere. Many feel justified by taking down his statue. Yet, some people argue that removing statues and monuments of controversial figures is erasing history.
READ:
An Opportunity for a New Interpretation of Christopher Columbus — Native News Online
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Hyperallergic’s news team discusses the toppling of racist statues and considers how the quest for justice continues during protests worldwide.
LISTEN:
The Monumental Impact of Black Lives Matter Protests
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Mind you, I wasn’t planning on having this conversation with anybody because it was very traumatic for me. I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted them to have a diversity training just so that I could be more comfortable at work. They didn’t even do that. They didn’t even invite me into th…
America, This Is Your ChanceMichelle Alexander, June 8, 2020,
The New York TimesOur democracy hangs in the balance. This is not an overstatement.
As
protests, riots, and police violence roiled the nation last week, the
president vowed to send the military to quell persistent rebellions and
looting, whether governors wanted a military occupation or not. John
Allen, a retired four-star Marine general, wrote that we may be
witnessing the “beginning of the end of the American experiment” because
of President Trump’s catastrophic failures.
Trump’s leadership
has been disastrous. But it would be a mistake to place the blame on him
alone. In part, we find ourselves here for the same reasons a civil war
tore our nation apart more than 100 years ago: Too many citizens prefer
to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power,
the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic
system. If we do not learn the lessons of history and choose a
radica…
‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning’Claudia Rankine, June 22, 2015,
The New York TimesThough the white liberal imagination likes to feel temporarily bad
about black suffering, there really is no mode of empathy that can
replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you
can be killed for simply being black.
– Claudia Rankine
continueMy Anger, God's Righteous Indignation (audio)Willie Jennings, June 2, 2020,
For the Life of the World (podcast)EPISODE SUMMARYGuest
contributor Willie Jennings (Yale) offers a response to the death of
George Floyd and the black experience of racism and police brutality. In
order to practice the discipline of hope, he suggests that we must take
hold of a shared anger, hate what God hates, reshape communities with
attention to the violence of segregation, and rethink the formation of
police officers and our understanding of criminality.
continueWith these racist markers in place, there can be no peaceKaren L. Cox, June 5, 2020,
…
think
absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption
