November 2020

By Ian Shapira Oct. 29, 2020 at 6:55 p.m. EDT Virginia Military Institute’s Board of Visitors voted Thursday to remove the prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson as pressure builds for the state-supported military school to address allegations of racism. The board’s unanimous decision follows a Washington Post report this month detailing bigotry at the 181-year-old school in…

Read More VMI votes to remove Stonewall Jackson statue amid racism accusations by Black cadets

October 29, 2020 By Jessica Mendoza Multimedia reporter; Samantha Laine Perfas Story Team Leader [This is one of a series of articles/podcasts in the Christian Science Monitor.] As Tulsa, Oklahoma, gears up to commemorate the 1921 race massacre, a new generation of Tulsans are finding ways to make the story of Black Wall Street their own. What can the country…

Read More Tulsa’s Black Wall Street burned. These artists have a new vision (audio).

Read more about Zadie Smith’s essay HERE or buy the essay collection Feel Free (hopefully at an independent bookseller).

Read More Zadie Smith

EVAN ANDREWS @ history.com [A]t least 12 chief executives—over a quarter of all American presidents—enslaved people during their lifetimes. Of these, eight held enslaved people while in office. George Washington Thomas Jefferson James Madison James Monroe Andrew Jackson Martin VanBuren William Henry Harrison John Tyler James K. Polk Zachary Taylor Andrew Johnson Ulysses S Grant

Read More How Many U.S. Presidents Owned Enslaved People?

CHRISTOPHER KLEIN In his ambition to rise above his humble beginnings, Hamilton appeared to have frequently swallowed his anti-slavery sentiments as he pushed for acceptance into America’s colonial elite—most of whom enslaved people. In 1780, he married into the wealthy, slaveholding Schuyler family. As a New York delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Hamilton saw the…

Read More Alexander Hamilton’s Complicated Relationship to Slavery

By MATT STAGGS First Circle: Limbo It’s the retirement community of the afterlife.  Second Circle: Lust The final destination of the lustful and adulterous; you can expect this place to be full of reality television stars. Ninth Circle: Treachery The final circle is a frozen wasteland occupied by history’s greatest traitors. So where would our current political leaders end…

Read More A Visitor’s Guide to Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell