The Big Isms

  We Are Not American!: Teaching and Learning the 19th Century from Hawai’i There’s a problem with teaching 19th-century American literature in Hawai’i . The problem arises from the fact that during the 19th century, Hawai’i was not, and, according to many Kanaka Maoli still is not, part of America . In 1893, the US overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom and its sovereign Queen Lili’uokalani, and in 1898 illegally annexed the Hawaiian islands, despite massive resistance from Hawaiian people. Hawai’i’s specific history is a particularly glaring and relatively recent example of the colonial situation under which 19th-century American literature is taught throughout the U.S.: it is all taught on stolen land . Hawai’i’s history and location, and how this place makes it impossible to forget about colonialism, present an opportunity for thinking about the challenges and paradoxes of teaching 19th-century American literature both in the islands and throug

  What Is White Replacement Theory? Explaining The White Supremacist Rhetoric  NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Kathleen Belew, co-editor of "A Field Guide to White Supremacy" about Great Replacement Theory, also known as White Replacement Theory.   READ

  CT educators share what is being taught in their classrooms amid growing outrage about Critical Race Theory Adria Watson, September 23, 2021, The CT Mirror As the school year resumes, so has an accusation creating tension in communities here and around the country: that teachers striving to help students understand how racism has influenced American society are using Critical Race Theory in their classrooms. In Manchester, a second-grade teacher took to social media earlier this month to announce her resignation because she felt her racially diverse district was covertly embracing Critical Race Theory through “cloaked terms like ‘equity.’” And in Guilford — where five conservative activists invoked Critical Race Theory to win a Republican primary last week — teachers like George Cooksey are being drowned out by those who say classrooms in his district are teaching “anti-white” lessons to students. continue   Descendants of early Black Yale graduates tell their s

  Human Wrongs Watch By Martha R. Bireda * Why the fear of teaching true American history? The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy | Image from Wall Street International Magazine . 28 September 2021 ( Wall Street International )* — The fear of teaching accurate American history and having honest discussions about race have seized many white parents across the nation. The mechanism employed by those promoting white supremacy ideology has been utilized for centuries. To encourage whites who had nothing to gain from supporting the Civil War, white supremacists spread the fear that blacks would be equal to whites and would seek retribution for their enslavement. When the enslaved were freed, the fear of savage blacks who only desired to rape white women was spread. White supremacists encouraged the idea that social integration in schools would lead to sexual relationships between black boys and white girls. Gas lighting and fear mongering tactics pre

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  excerpt: Lynching in America Racial terror lynching between 1865 and 1950 claimed the lives of thousands of African Americans and created a legacy of injustice that can still be felt today. Following the Civil War and the premature end of Reconstruction, white leaders sought to uphold an ideology of white supremacy, using intimidation and fatal violence to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynching emerged as the most public and notorious form of racial terrorism as state and federal officials largely tolerated these lawless killings of Black people by not holding white mobs accountable for their crimes. Many Black people were lynched for resisting economic exploitation, violating perceived social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or being accused of crimes, even when there was no evidence tying the accused to any offense. White people’s allegations against Black people were rarely subject to scrutiny, often sparking lethal violence without an

Digital records from 19th Century give Black families a glimpse of their ancestry Curtis Bunn, September 17, 2021, NBC News This month, the genealogy site Ancestry.com unveiled a Black family lineage game-changer — 3.5 million records of previously enslaved Black people, available for free. It is believed to be the world’s largest digitized and searchable collection of Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman’s Bank archives. The collection has Black genealogists and habitual researchers thrilled because the descendants of the enslaved in America can learn more about their families in a far easier way. “This is very exciting and will help many researchers, historians and ordinary people trying to learn more about their ancestry,” said Angela Dodson, CEO of Editorsoncall, a company that provides editorial services for writers. Dodson has done extensive work on researching her own family tree.  continue   How the Origins of Epidemiology Are Linked to the Transatlantic Slav

Pandemic Legacies: Health, Healing, and Medicine in the Age of Slavery and Beyond Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture |   2021 Lapidus Center Conference October 6-8, 2021 register here Just as the slave trade tied together the cultures and populations of four continents, it also wed together distinctive disease ecologies. The lack of local populations with exploitable labor in the Americas compelled an increase in the volume of Africans that Europeans forced into the transatlantic slave trade, setting the stage for epidemic diseases and other health issues that shaped the cultural, social, and material life of Atlantic slavery. Genocidal warfare and the destructive effects of Eurasian African epidemic diseases caused the near decimation of Indigenous populations. Yellow fever, a virus native to tropical West Africa, became a common scourge to American ports. Doctors theorizing about the virus developed racial stereotypes that posited that people of African de

Memory and memorials: Yale scholar’s work influences removal of Lee statue Mike Cummings, September 13, 2021, Yale News Yale historian David Blight visited Richmond, Virginia, often in the late 1990s while researching the Civil War’s effect on American memory. When not sifting through archives, he’d jog along the city’s famed Monument Avenue, named for the five grandiose memorials to Confederate leaders that adorned the tree-lined boulevard and grassy mall. At the time, Blight couldn’t imagine that those monuments would ever come down. “It was unthinkable,” he said. “This was the most important shrine to the Confederacy right in the heart of Richmond, the former Confederate capital.” More than 20 years later, Blight had a role in the legal battle that paved the way to removing the last and most prominent of the avenue’s Confederate monuments: a towering equestrian statue of rebel general and slaveowner Robert E. Lee. continue BRIEF AMICUS CURIAE OF HISTORIANS D

How a Surprise Discovery of Photographs From the 1960s Meets the Moment Pierre-Antoine Louis, Sept. 4, 2021, The New York Times Not long after his mother passed away in 2018, a massive relic from Jeffrey Henson Scales’ childhood was unexpectedly found in his family’s home. His stepfather and older brother were preparing the house for an eventual sale when they came across a trove of 40 rolls of film. “We think these are probably yours,” they told Mr. Scales, a photographer and a photo editor at The New York Times . Included in the rolls were photographs that Mr. Scales had taken when he was a teenager — images that captured major cultural, political and social moments of the 1960s. There were pictures of student protests in Berkeley, Calif., photos of Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone at the famous Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, and about 15 rolls of the Black Panther Party. continue   Who Segregated America? Destin Jenkons, August 31, 2021, Public Bo

 Opinion - 2021-09-06   Staff Reporter Reconciliation is defined by Oxford as “The process of making one’s view or belief compatible with another.” Putting national reconciliation into context, this is the term used for the establishment of national unity in countries faced with political and civil problems. These problems can be war, tribalism, racism, xenophobia and so forth. Therefore, reconciliation is viewed as a process of healing relationships that requires public truth-sharing, apology and commemoration that acknowledge and redress past harms. It is a long-term process that requires patience and tolerance. After WWII, many countries established truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) that were aimed at investigating and performing an inquiry on the atrocities that were committed by both sides of the war. In the same vein, many African countries such as Liberia, Congo, South Africa and Rwanda joined the bandwagon to deal with their civil conflict aftermath. Des

BOOK REVIEW Sections in Heroes of Ireland’s Great Hunger include “The Kindness of Strangers,” with chapters on Quaker philanthropy, an exiled Polish Count who distributed emergency famine relief, and an American sea captain who arranged food shipments to Ireland; “Women’s Agency,” with three chapters on women who “rolled up her linen sleeves” to aid the poor; “Medical Heroes,” with five doctors who risked their own lives to aid the Irish; and sections on the role of religious orders in providing relief and Irish leadership. Final reflections include a chapter on “The Choctaw Gift.” The Choctaw were an impoverished Native American tribe who suffered through the Trail of Tears displacement to the Oklahoma Territory. They donated more than they could afford to Irish Famine Relief because they understood the hardship of oppression and going without. KEEP READING  Christine Kinealy recently released a collection of essays, prepared with Jason King and Gerard Moran, Heroes of Ir

The sculpture "Point of View" imagines a meeting between Guyasuta (Seneca) and George Washington which shaped the future of the Ohio Valley. Pittsburgh. Image Lee Paxton  CC BY-SA 4.0 Guyasuta   In 1753, when George Washington first crossed the Appalachian Mountains to the region around modern Pittsburgh, it was to deliver an eviction notice. A French army had occupied what is now western Pennsylvania, and Washington’s British employers wanted them gone.   Accompanying Washington on the last leg of his western trek was a Seneca warrior named Guyasuta. His job was to hunt game for the British, and his and Washington’s paths would cross again.   In the French and Indian War, which started the very next year, the Senecas sided with France. In July 1755, when a nominally French army consisting mostly of Native Americans decimated Gen. George Braddock’s expeditionary force eight miles east of the future site of Pittsburg, two of the survivors, on opp