African American history

By Danny McDonald Globe Staff, Updated July 15, 2022, 6:03 p.m. But white supremacist movements have deep roots in Massachusetts and New England, historians said. While the displays of propaganda are shockingly hateful and vile, they are far from new. The Colonists, of course, codified slavery in Massachusetts in 1641, more than a century before the United States…

Read More In progressive Massachusetts, a long history of white supremacy

This day in history: ‘Disco Demolition Night’ On this day in 1979, nearly 50,000 people packed Comiskey Park on the southwest side of Chicago to watch local DJ and notorious disco hater Steve Dahl blow up a bunch of disco records in between a White Sox doubleheader. “Disco Demolition Night” remains one of the seminal…

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“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer – a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.“   Frederick Douglass Every year on this day I make an assessment, from my own perspective, of how much…

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US gas prices continue to rise, set record prices last week; current national average at $4.59 per gallon, with California prices above $6 per gallon (More) Archaeologists uncover tomb of ancient Egyptian dignitary who handled secret documents for the pharaoh roughly 4,300 years ago (More) Southern Baptist Convention executive leadership meets today following an independent report that found the organization covered up…

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By Michael Duffy Washington Post Opinions editor-at-large We are witnessing something of a watershed moment in the reckoning America is having with itself and its history. Harvard University released a 134-page report Tuesday that begins to explain how, as Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it, “the nation’s oldest, richest and most prestigious institution of higher learning” benefited from slavery.  Two Harvard…

Read More A hard historical truth about Harvard

By Gillian Brockell “We captured three Negro soldiers, the first we had seen,” Private Byrd Willis wrote on May 8, 1864. “They were taken out on the road side and shot and their bodies left there.” Coming across these lines a century and a half later was “a chilling experience,” Lambert said in a phone interview.…

Read More Three Black soldiers executed by Confederates are finally being honored in Virginia

Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie “Moms” Mabley, was an American stand-up comedian and actress. Mabley began her career on the theater stage in the 1920s and became a veteran entertainer of the Chitlin’ Circuit of African-American vaudeville. Mabley later recorded comedy albums and appeared in films and on television programs including The…

Read More What Do You Know About “Moms” Mabley?

By Shawn Donnan, Ann Choi, Hannah Levitt, and Christopher Cannon March 11, 2022 Nationwide, only 47% of Black homeowners who completed a refinance application with Wells Fargo in 2020 were approved, compared with 72% of White homeowners, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of federal mortgage data. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. bank by assets,…

Read More Black Mortgage Applicants with Almost Highest Income Approved at Same Rate as White Applicants with Lowest Income