Showing posts from March, 2020
'Remarkable'
woman discovered as last known survivor of transatlantic slave trade
Jack Guy, March 26, 2020,
CNN
(CNN) — A woman who was taken from Africa when she was just two years
old has been identified as the last known survivor of the transatlantic
slave trade.
Matilda McCrear was taken from West Africa to Mobile, Alabama, on board the last slave transport ship, the
Clotilda, in July 1860, a UK researcher has discovered, uncovering the life of a remarkable woman.
McCrear was transported alongside her mother Gracie, three older
sisters, and a man who became her stepfather, according to a press
release from Newcastle University. Her two brothers were left in West
Africa.
McCrear, her mother and one sister were bought by the same slaveowner, while the other two siblings were never seen again.
She died in 1940 when she was 81 or 82. McCrear's grandson, Johnny
Crear, now 83 years old, said he had "no idea" she had been on the
Clotilda and said the new infor…
The
Epidemics America Got Wrong
Jim Downs, March 22, 2020,
The AtlanticBy late March 1863, hundreds had died in Alexandria, Virginia. The
mortality rate had almost doubled in just one night, and even quadrupled
in other parts of the country. Three thousand people were dead in less
than a month in North and South Carolina. The
numbers in Louisiana, Georgia, and parts of Mississippi were equally as
high. As a smallpox epidemic tore through the country, more than 49,000
people died from June 1865 to December 1867, the years an official
count was kept.
Smallpox exploded at this time not because of a lack of protocols or
knowledge—a vaccine even existed—but because political leaders simply
didn’t care about the group that was getting sick. Government inaction
or delay—due to racial discrimination, homophobia,
stigma, and apathy—have shaped the course of many epidemics in our
country. In the 1980s, for example, HIV spread as the government barely
acknowledged its existence.
No…
In the News
The
history of slavery remains with us today
Ariela Gross and Alejandro de la Fuente, March 9, 2020,
The Washington PostNow that the Democratic primary race has narrowed to two older white
male candidates, political analysts have begun to focus on the
allegiances of African American voters, who are the core of the
Democratic Party base. Some have suggested that African American
support of Joe Biden rests less on their trust in him, than on their
distrust of white voters’ willingness to vote for a woman, a person of
color or a progressive.
This reasoning suggests that African American voters make pragmatic
political choices based on an understanding of the persistence of
anti-black racism in our society, sometimes settling for a white
candidate who they think will be least objectionable to white
voters while causing African Americans the least harm.
To understand where we are today, we need to understand the deep roots of anti-black racism in the history of the Am…
The
latest battle over the Confederate flag isn’t happening where you’d expect
Megan Kate Nelson, March 6, 2020,
The Washington PostLast month, the debate over the public display of Confederate
flags and monuments boiled over in Tucson, when city council member Lane
Santa Cruz pushed the town to ban the Confederate flag, which had been
carried by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, from the
city’s annual Rodeo Parade. Mayor Regina Romero agreed, issuing a
statement asserting that “the flag has no place in the rodeo parade or
elsewhere in our community.”
To most Americans, Arizona seems as far from the battlefields of the American Civil War as one can get.
But it was in the first year of the Civil War that what we think of as
Arizona came into being — as a Confederate territory. In fact,
Confederate actions in the Far Western theater of the war reveal the
extent to which the Confederate flag became a symbol of
white supremacy and conquest.
continueNew
Stories for an Old Confli…
In the News
TAKE
YOUR FREEDOM: A Play About Slavery Pushes Boundaries in a New York Prison
Alice Speri, February 22 2020,
The InterceptA group of families and New York state officials gathered on a workday
morning last month for a theatrical performance of a historical drama
about slavery and human freedom. But it was an unusual setting for a
play, especially for one pondering the question
of liberation, because the stage was deep inside a maximum-security
prison, and the actors were a group of incarcerated men, many of whom
still face decades behind bars.
At the end of the play, the two-dozen cast members lined up at the
front of the stage as one actor after the other removed their costumes:
a simple, white T-shirt with the word “slave” or the character’s slave
name written across the chest. Below the stage,
in the first row, a group of suited senior corrections officials looked
on uncomfortably.
Then the audience, officials included, broke into a standing ovation.
The cas…
think
absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption
