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...
Black history
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...
Rep. Scott Perry references Frederick Douglass from the House floor. Historian David Blight is having none of it.
I have never voted for Scott Perry, but he does represent me in the United States House of Representatives. Perry is the chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. He refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating January 6th...
The Author’s Corner with Elliott Drago
Elliott Drago is Editorial Officer of the Jack Miller Center. This interview is based on his new book, Street Diplomacy: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom in Philadelphia, 1820-1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Street...
The Author’s Corner with Trent Brown
Trent Brown is Professor of American Studies at Missouri University of Science and Technology. This interview is based on his new book, Roadhouse Justice: Hattie Lee Barnes and the Killing of a White Man in 1950s Mississippi (LSU Press, 2022)....
Advanced Placement African American Studies: a progress report
Back in August we brought your attention to Advanced Placement African American Studies. Sixty high schools around the country are piloting this new course during the 2022-2023 academic year. Over at CNN, Brandon Tensley reports on how things are going...
The labor rights radical behind the 1963 March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place 59 years ago this week (August 28, 1963). Shawn Gude ofJacobin interviews historian William P. Jones about A. Philip Randolph, the Black socialist who spoke at the 1963 event and...
Advanced Placement African American Studies is here!
This academic year students at 60 high schools around the country are taking AP African American Studies. Here is Olivia Waxman at Time: The course will be the College Board’s 40th Advanced Placement course, and the first new AP course...
The Author’s Corner with Jeroen Dewulf
Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in the Department of German & Dutch Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. This interview is based on his new book, Afro-Atlantic Catholics: America’s First Black Christians (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022)....
Kareem Abdul Jabbar on Bill Russell
Here is Kareem at his Substack page: I always knew I wanted to be active in civil rights, but I didn’t always know how I would do that. I had attended some anti-war and civil rights protests rallies while at...
The Author’s Corner with Davis Houck
Davis Houck is Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies at Florida State University. This interview is based on his new book, Black Bodies in the River: Searching for Freedom Summer (University Press of Mississippi, 2022). JF: What led you...
The Author’s Corner with Daniel J. Broyld
Daniel J. Broyld is Associate Professor of African American History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. This interview is based on his new book, Borderland Blacks: Two Cities in the Niagara Region during the Final Decades of Slavery (LSU Press,...
Does Harvard possess the remains of 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved people?
Here is Gillian Brockell at The Washington Post: Harvard University holds the human remains of thousands of Native American people, despite a 1990 federal law requiring their return, according to a draft report leaked to the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson....
The African American Intellectual History Society announces the finalists for its 2022 Pauli Murray Book Prize
The finalists are: Tamika Nunley, At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. (University of North Carolina Press) Jarvis Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching (Harvard University Press) Karen Cook Bell, Running From Bondage:...
The history of “woke”
In a piece at The Washington Post, writer Bijan C. Bayne argues that “woke” is “the least woke word in U.S. English.” Here is a taste: You want to talk about Black history? Well, here’s a bit of etymology about...
National Trust for Historic Preservation will award $3 million to landmarks of Black history
The money will go to Houston’s Freedmen’s Town, Martha Vineyard’s African American Heritage Trail, Historic Athens (Georgia), Denver’s Black American West Museum and Heritage Center, Cherokee State Resort Historical Park (KY), Fort Monroe (VA), Asbury United Methodist Church (DC), Roberts...