150 years ago yesterday, Douglass delivered this Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery. Decoration Day was the predecessor of Memorial Day. Learn more about it here. Here is Douglass: The Unknown Loyal Dead Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, on Decoration […]
slavery
Texas is trying to whitewash its history
One of these days I will try to put together a list of state education boards trying to change their history curriculums so that students do not come face to face with the many sins of America’s past. Texas will […]
Does your church have a racist past?
Check out Mark Wingfield’s piece at Baptist World Global titled “What to do if you unearth a history of slavery in your church, college, or institution?” Here’s a taste: With increasing attention to the roots of American slavery in religious […]
The ever-usable John Brown
Here is Yale graduate student Bennett Parten at History Today: …John Brown became an American sensation, a source of both fear and enchantment. Slaveholders reviled him; abolitionists wept for him, tolled bells in his honour and came to see him […]
A conservative case for reparations
I spent a day with Washington Post contributor and Ohio journalist Gary Abernathy in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. He was part of a group of students and teachers who visited Messiah University as part of a Georgetown […]
“Much of what we know about the domestic slave trade…in the United States is wrong”
Here is University of Alabama historian Joshua Rothman: Much of what we think we know about the domestic slave trade and domestic traders of enslaved people in the United States is wrong. To the extent most Americans think about the […]
Preserving the Great Dismal Swamp
The Great Dismal Swamp is a massive swamp located along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. George Washington was a shareholder in the Dismal Swamp Company, a venture in land speculation that tried to drain the swamp and turn […]
The Author’s Corner with Kelly Jones
Kelly Jones is Assistant Professor of History at Arkansas Tech University. This interview is based on her new book, A Weary Land: Slavery on the Ground in Arkansas (University of Georgia Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write A […]