Morgan Jerkins

Morgan Jerkins: Exploring the Multitudes within American Blackness

The story of displacement is the story of Black lives in America. Between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South and headed elsewhere—to the North, West, Midwest—in...
Two police officers in full riot gear arrest a Black man during a breakout of rioting and looting on the West side of Detroit, Michigan, July 23, 1967.

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 Emancipation Day Celebration, June 19, 1900, Texas by Mrs. Charles Stephenson

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...
An illustration of Charivari by Jean-Jacques Grandville, 1831

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...
Ulysses S. Grant between 1860 and 1865

Why Ulysses S. Grant Was More Important Than You Think

...gesture of unity between North and South, with an eye toward reconciliation after the war. But Johnson was unsuited to the tasks of Reconstruction, particularly leading the Republic in accepting...
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates testifies during a hearing on slavery reparations held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on June 19, 2019.

The Case for Reparations Is Nothing New

...streets into the halls of power: The National Coalition of Blacks in North America. Why, some may ask, is Dorothy Lewis referred to as Queen Mother within the grassroots reparations...
Kanye West performs Sunday Service during the 2019 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival in 2019

The Gospel According to Kanye West

...its location rotates weekly and is set to go international in 2020. The Origins of Gospel Choirs Gospel music was birthed “in the storefront churches of the North and South”...
Simón Bolívar by José Gil de Castro

Bolívar in Haiti

...message. Δ A Divided Haiti Post-revolutionary Haiti was not without its complications. Soon after independence it would be split into two: Henri Christophe’s kingdom in the North, and Alexandre Pétion’s...
The first black marines decorated by the famed 2nd Marine Dvision somewhere in the Pacific. (Left to right) Staff Sgt Timerlate Kirven and Cpl. Samuel J. Love, Sr., received Purple Hearts for wounds received in the Battle of Saipan.

Who Were the Montford Point Marines?

...Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters—was planning a march on Washington to pressure Roosevelt to open up the defense industry to blacks. But the president resisted. The Commandant of the Marine...
Whitman at about fifty

Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled?

...old white men like Whitman who said blacks were stupid, shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and didn’t have a place in the future of America.” The performance of “Song of...