Black Perspectives is running an online forum on civil rights activist and Christian mystic Howard Thurman. Here are the pieces they have published: Tejai Beulah Howard, Howard Thurman’s Biographer: An Author Interview with Peter Eisenstadt Dorsey Blake, Beyond Faiths and […]
African American history
Virginia will commemorate “Green Book” locations
The Negro Motorist Green Book (or simply Green Book) was an annual guidebook that included businesses–hotels, restaurants, etc.– friendly to African American travelers. Last month Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law a bill that designates surviving Green Book locations […]
“The issue is not white supremacy, the issue is which whites will be supreme”
[History] cuts a lot of the bullshit. If somebody can just say “white supremacy,” it releases them from having to talk about something that my mentor C. Vann Woodward pointed out many years ago in discussing the disenfranchisement movement in […]
The Author’s Corner with Leslie A. Schwalm
Leslie A. Schwalm is Professor Emeritus of History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. This interview is based on her new book, Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America (University of North Carolina […]
What is an intellectual? Some thoughts on Ibram X. Kendi’s piece in The Atlantic
In his recent piece at The Atlantic, Ibram X. Kendi describes how he has “struggled over what it means to be an intellectual.” Kendi is a National Book Award winner and a leading proponent of anti-racism from his perch aa […]
David Waldstreicher brings his “blunt intellectual style” to a biography of Phillis Wheatley
Here is Jennifer Schuessler at The New York Times: Around 1772, Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved teenager in Boston, sat down to write a poem called “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” which began with praise for the “mercy” that […]
Two divergent explanations of Southern inequality
Over at Dissent, political scientist Jared Loggins reviews Adolph Reed’s The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives and Imani Perry’s South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation. (See my review of […]
John McWhorter on the AP African American Studies course
Earlier this month the College Board removed a few writers, ideas, and subjects from its AP African American Studies course. The Board removed lessons on Black queer studies, intersectionality, the Black Lives Matter Movement, Black feminist literary thought, the reparations […]
New Jersey will expand AP African American Studies courses
While governor Ron DeSantis is trying to prevent the course from being taught in Florida, governor Phil Murphy is expanding its availability in New Jersey. Here is The Associated Press: Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said Tuesday that his administration is […]
The Author’s Corner with Thomas Aiello
Thomas Aiello is Professor of History, Africana Studies, and Anthrozoology at Valdosta State University. This interview is based on his new book, Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, […]
Episode 109: “The Voice and Faith of Sojourner Truth”
In this episode we talk with historian and biographer Nancy Koester about her new book on nineteenth-century abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Sojourner Truth. Our discussion focuses on Truth’s lifelong pursuit of a just society, a deeper knowledge of God, and […]
What it was like to be a Black man playing for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1960s?
Here is Mark Dent at The Washington Post: When Mike Garrett, a Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Southern California, was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in 1966, the only thing he knew about his new home was the […]
What were those 1870 buttons all about?
Did anyone wonder why some members of Congress were wearing “1870” buttons? Here is Rory Murphy at Local Today: An “1870” pin worn by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others at the State of the Union address. As […]
Steven Mintz: “I find it stunning that the World Socialist Web Site remains the place to turn if one truly wants to understand…the controversies surrounding ‘The 1619 Project.'”
At his blog at Insider Higher Ed, University of Texas American historian Steven Mintz offers a brief review of both the AP African American Studies course and the American Historical Review‘s forum on the 1619 Project. His take on AP […]
The Organization of American Historians responds to the Florida controversy over AP African American Studies
Here is the statement: Last week we learned of the extraordinary decision by Florida’s Department of Education to reject the College Board’s Advanced Placement course on African American Studies in the state’s high schools. Claiming that the course violates Florida […]
The president of the AAC&U responds to the the Advanced Placement African American Studies controversy in Florida
Not familiar with what is going in Florida regarding this course? Get up to speed here. Lynn Pasquerella is president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Mary Dana Hinton is immediate past chair of the AAC&U Board of […]
Found: A new Phillis Wheatley poem
Here is a press release from the State University of New York at Albany: A University at Albany professor has discovered the earliest known full-length elegy by famed poet Phillis Wheatley (Peters), widely regarded as the first Black person, enslaved […]
The Author’s Corner with Leslie M. Alexander
Leslie M. Alexander is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. This interview is based on her new book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States (University […]
The Author’s Corner with Jacqueline Jones
Jacqueline Jones is Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin. This interview is based on her new book, No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the […]
Goodbye Roger Taney
Earlier this week my U.S. history survey students answered a final exam essay question on the short-term causes of the American Civil War. I haven’t graded their essays yet, but if their blue books do not contain something about Roger […]