Freedom Libraries and the Fight for Library Equity
In his acceptance speech at the National Book Awards in 2016, Congressman John Lewis spoke of his youth, and his love of books and reading. “I remember in 1956, when...
Adolph Reed Jr.: The Perils of Race Reductionism
Adolph Reed Jr., the distinguished political scientist and commentator, became interested in politics early in life. Born into a family of academics in New York, he moved around a bunch—to...
The First Vietnamese in America
...of a Vietnamese in America” is in a 1912 letter from New York City. The author, Nguyễn Tất Thành, got to North America working in the kitchen of a French...
How to Gather the Oral Histories of COVID-19
...from every state and background, from boxers in Chicago to farmers in Alabama to circus performers in Oregon. An interview session in the StoryCorps sound booth December 18, 2003 at...
When Black Celebrities Wore Blackface
...female dancers, writers, and performers, like Aida Overton Walker and Abbie Mitchell Cook who were active partners in the creative process in Black Bohemia, and stars in musicals like In...
Morgan Jerkins: Exploring the Multitudes within American Blackness
...Morgan Jerkins claims, many Blacks have been left with gaps in their family history. In Jerkins’ new book, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her...
The Detroit Rebellion
...class unity. Suspicion pervaded on both sides. Until the great migration north, most Black workers were agricultural workers. When, alongside many white workers, they migrated to cities in the North,...
Juneteenth and the Emancipation Proclamation
...(2004): 1-22. “In the jubilation that surrounded the arrival of emancipation, free blacks in the North and enslaved blacks in the South rejoiced at the sound of Lincoln’s name and...
Ye Olde Morality-Enforcement Brigades
...North American versions of this boisterous practice during its last hurrah in the late nineteenth century. There were different kinds of charivari, in both the city and the country, explains...
Why Ulysses S. Grant Was More Important Than You Think
President Andrew Johnson barely escaped being convicted by the Senate during his impeachment trial of 1868. The Tennessean had been selected as Abraham Lincoln’s running mate in 1864 in a...