The Big Isms

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Frederick Douglass’s Vision for a Reborn America
David Blight, December 2019, The Atlantic

“We are a country of all extremes, ends and opposites; the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world … In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name or number.”
— Frederick Douglass, 1869

In the late 1860s, Frederick Douglass, the fugitive slave turned prose poet of American democracy, toured the country spreading his most sanguine vision of a pluralist future of human equality in the recently re-United States. It is a vision worth revisiting at a time when the country seems once again to be a house divided over ethnicity and race, and over how to interpret our foundational creeds.

The Thirteenth Amendment (ending slavery) had been ratified, Congress had approved the Fourteenth Amendment (introducing birthright citizenship and the equal-protection clause), and Douglass was…

Antigua Demands Harvard Pay Reparations for Benefiting From SlaveryThe labor of enslaved people paid for the founding of Harvard Law School, Antigua’s prime minister reminded the college’s president.

READ: Antigua Demands Harvard Pay Reparations for Benefiting From Slavery

In 1893, Ida B. Wells published a pamphlet titled “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition.” The expo, which lasted for six months, was held in Chicago and was meant to chart the trajectory of the Americas in the four hundred years since Columbus had arrived.  Though a handful of African-Americans had individual exhibits at the fair, there was none specifically dedicated to the history or the accomplishments of African-Americans as a people. Wells secured contributions for the pamphlet from Frederick Douglass, the educator and journalist Irvine Garland Penn, and the lawyer and activist Ferdinand Lee Barnett. Together with Wells, they wrote about the ways in which black life could enrich the fair’s official version of American history, which, as Wells noted in the pamphlet’s introduction, had rendered invisible the contributions of black people to the American might that the fair was intended to celebrate.
GREAT READ: What W. E. B. Du Bois Conveye…

British university appoints history professor to examine its links to transatlantic slave trade
Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN, October 30, 2019



A British university has appointed the country's first black female professor of history to lead research into the transatlantic slave trade.

Olivette Otele will take up her new role as the University of Bristol's first Professor of the History of Slavery on January 1, the institution said in a press release.

Her first task will be a two-year research project on the university's and the city of Bristol's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

Bristol's wealth in the 17th century was largely built on the slave trade, with more than 2,000 slaving vessels setting out from the city's port between 1698 and 1807, when Parliament abolished the slave trade, according to Bristol Museums.

During that period, slave ships carried more than 500,000 people from Africa to the Americas.
One slave trader, Edward Colston, tran…

The Last Lynching Victim in South Carolina
Brent M. S. Campney reviews William B. Gravely’s They Stole Him Out of Jail: Willie Earle, South Carolina’s Last Lynching Victim.
October 31, 2019, Black Perspectives



In They Stole Him Out of Jail: Willie Earle, South Carolina’s Last Lynching Victim, William B. Gravely, professor emeritus at the University of Denver, explores the 1947 lynching of Willie Earle in South Carolina, the criminal investigations and trials that followed, and the memory and legacy of those events. The product of some forty years of research, the book builds upon an impressive evidentiary base, including newspaper coverage by the Black and white presses, interviews with participants and witnesses, and letters and a notebook regarding the trial proceedings written by the British novelist Rebecca West, who was in attendance. Unfortunately, he notes, “no library, private holdings, attorney files, court records, or archive has a transcript of the trial” (168)…

Chantal da Silva, October 28, 2019, Newsweek



It was just over two centuries ago that as many as 500 enslaved people in Louisiana started to march nearly 26 miles to New Orleans, chanting the battle cry: "Freedom or Death."

For many, the effort would end in the latter, with dozens of people believed to have been brutally killed. Surviving organizers were forced to face a tribunal, which saw some sentenced to death by firing squad.

The "German Coast Uprising of 1811" would go on to be known as one of the largest slave rebellions in history–yet, as The Smithsonian noted, it is "oft-overlooked."

One artist, Dread Scott, is looking to change that, however, organizing a reenactment of the uprising that will see hundreds of people march 26 miles over the span of two days on November 8 and 9 to ensure that an important moment in U.S. history is never forgotten.

"The position of black people in American society is a big question, including the agency…

The Electoral College: How the Founders Cheated You of Your Voteby Harlow Giles UngerWeeks of debate by America’s Founders failed to set any rules at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia—a failure that led to “cheating” at the Electoral College ever since. The aging Benjamin Franklin agreed that failure to permit the people to choose the chief magistrate was “contrary to republican principles. In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors and sovereigns.” read 

$27 Million for Reparations Over Slave Ties Pledged by Seminary
Ed Shanahan,  October 21, 2019, The New York Times



A New Jersey seminary has pledged to spend $27 million on scholarships and other initiatives to address its historical ties to slavery, in what appears to be the biggest effort of its kind.

The announcement, by the Princeton Theological Seminary on Friday, came about a year after an internal report detailed the findings of a two-year investigation that showed slavery’s deep roots in the school’s past.

The move put the seminary at the heart of a national discussion about what those who reaped the benefits of slavery — and the United States as a whole — owe to the descendants of slaves.

In a sign of that discussion’s complicated nature, Nicholas Young, the leader of a black student group at the seminary, said that the steps outlined by officials amounted to “a good start” but that they fell short of what the group had sought. About 10 percent of the seminary’s 36…

Mormons in Mexico: A brief history of polygamy, cartel violence and faithby Rebecca JanzenAlong with the Romneys – relatives of Sen. Mitt Romney, whose father was born in Mexico – the LeBarons are among the most storied families in Mormon history. Members of Utah’s Latter-Day Saints community emigrated to Mexico in the 1880s to follow their religious beliefs by living in polygamous families, which was illegal in the United States. +Members of this community report enduring beatings, underage marriage and other abuse, as the escapee Anna LeBaron recounts in her 2017 memoir “The Polygamist’s Daughter.” 
Legal definition of polygamy: Theoffense of willfullyandknowinglyhavingmorethanonewife or husband at thesametime.Theoffense of willfullyandknowinglyenteringinto asecondmarriagewhilevalidlymarried to anotherindividual is bigamy.

Anti-polygamylaws in theUnitedStatesalsosprangfromreligiousconflict. In themid-1800s,widespreadpublichostilityarosetowardthepractice of polygamy by members of theCh…

Nicole Phillip, October 29, 2019, The New York Times Magazine



Americans descended from enslaved ancestors often struggle to trace their family histories. Vivid, well-documented stories are precious and rare.

But when we asked readers of The 1619 Project to share stories about their enslaved ancestors, dozens of readers replied — and many shared documents and photographs.

The images and stories below help paint a picture of a too-often-erased American history. The responses have been condensed and edited for clarity.

The Civil War Veteran
The Rev. Moses Berry, 69, of Ashgrove, Mo., shared this photograph and the story behind it.

The Photograph This was always in the family picture book. Every 10 years, the Missouri Sixth Cavalry had a reunion and a group photo was taken. This one was from November 1908. My great-grandfather Wallace White sits at the bottom, third from the right.

The Story Wallace was freed before the end of the Civil War by Union soldiers, from the field where …

Restaurant Owner Enslaved Intellectually Disabled Black Man https://t.co/fHNNP0wTv4 — Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) November 7, 2019

The 1526 Project: Horrors in Florida's Black History You Didn't Learn in School
Jess Nelson, October 22, 2019, Miami New Times



The horrors of slavery in United States history and its continued impact today are undeniable. Though Florida's pristine beaches and palm trees aren't typically regarded as part of America's Deep South, the facts say otherwise.

The New York Times' groundbreaking "1619 Project" examined the legacy of slavery on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to America's 13 original colonies. But slavery existed in the Spanish colony of La Florida nearly a century earlier. On the eve of the American Civil War, half of Florida's population were slaves, and Florida was the third state to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy in order to preserve slavery and white supremacy. Jim Crow laws were introduced during Reconstruction to enforce racial segregation in the apartheid state while the Ku K…

Their Land Became Part of Central Park. They’re Coming Back in a Monument.
Julia Jacobs, October 20, 2019, The New York Times



In Central Park, about a mile from land that was once home to Seneca Village, a mostly black community forced out by the park’s creation in the 1850s, the city is planning a privately funded monument to a revered black family from that time.

The new addition to New York’s landscape, honoring the Lyons family, is part of the de Blasio administration’s push to diversify the city’s public art and recognize overlooked figures from its history. The Lyonses were Seneca Village property owners, educators and dedicated abolitionists, running a boardinghouse for black sailors that doubled as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The monument will include the figures of Albro Lyons, Mary Joseph Lyons and their daughter Maritcha Lyons, who was significant in her own right as a teacher, suffragist and racial justice activist.

“We traverse towns and cities across t…

White Nationalism, anyone? https://t.co/XodIaPCj1x — Schrödinger's adopted jesus (@SnavelyBrent) November 5, 2019
pic.twitter.com/AuBR8P7hu6 — Sandy Keith Buckles (@SandyBuckles) November 5, 2019

Why the New Emmett Till Memorial Needed to Be Bulletproof
The Editorial Board, October 23, 2019, The New York Times



Mississippi was the epicenter of the racial terror lynchings in which thousands of African-American men, women and children were hanged, shot, drowned, dismembered or burned alive across the South between the end of the Civil War and the mid-20th century.

The case of the state’s best-known victim — 14-year-old Emmett Till, lynched in 1955 — stands out against this blood-drenched backdrop, both for the barbaric violence involved and because the murder helped to galvanize the modern civil rights movement.

Despite its obvious importance, the Till story remained shut out of Mississippi’s civic life until 2005, when signs memorializing the lynching started to appear in public — and were targeted for desecration.

The defilement of the signs reflects the belief that Mississippi’s public square should be reserved for Confederate memorials and other testaments to whit…

The Truth Is Out There

Writing truthfully is an act of bravery. It takes courage to put words into the world, knowing they will be judged and you along with them. The more truth there is to a story, the more powerful it is, and the more vulnerable the one who wrote it. I am proud that every piece collected here represents a facet of truth, contributed by a group of writers who each are unique, talented, and courageous.

Some of the stories in this issue of TCJ Student paint pictures of fleeting moments of melancholy or happiness, while others capture the span of years that it takes trees to root. Some turn outward into the world to thrill with whip-crack snaps of violence, and others fold inward to ponder the patterns of thinking that can define a people. These stories are fascinating and touching, and they are more than just words on a page. By virtue of their existence, they are an unrepentant reclamation of a stolen narrative.

Stereotypes and clichés about Native American…