Ebony magazine rolled out a quiz in April 1952 that asked, “WHICH ONE IS NEGRO? WHICH IS WHITE?” How many can you guess correctly? (Answers at the end of the blog.) From Essence.com: Passing follows the story of two Black women, former childhood friends Irene Redfield (Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Negga), both of whom are able to convincingly…
Read More PassingSeptember 9, 2021 by Neely Tucker (Library of Congress) Descendants of Venture Smith gather at his gravesite in East Haddam, Connecticut, during the town’s 2019 Venture Smith Day. Photo courtesy of Venture Smith Day Celebration Committee. Delighted to write this post with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. “I was born at Dukandarra,…
Read More Venture Smith: The First Slave NarrativeSeptember 9, 2021 by Neely Tucker (Library of Congress) Descendants of Venture Smith gather at his gravesite in East Haddam, Connecticut, during the town’s 2019 Venture Smith Day. Photo courtesy of Venture Smith Day Celebration Committee. Delighted to write this post with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. “I was born at Dukandarra,…
Read More Venture Smith: The First Slave NarrativePeace-Of-Mind During America’s Gilded Age, Clarence King was a famous geologist, friend of wealthy, famous, and powerful men. He was a larger-than-life character whose intellect and wanderlust pushed him to survey far-flung regions of the western U.S. and South America and develop an abiding appreciation of non-Western culture and people. What his family and wealthy…
Read More Clarence KingIf … one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history. James Baldwin By LaGarrett King Jun 17, 2021, 10:00pm MDT Miseducation, defined,…
Read More Why our schools aren’t doing justice to the complexities of Black historyWant to learn more about African-American history? Think you know a lot and want to fill in some gaps? Need something to back up your wolf tickets at the barbershop? Here are some resources to help. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America…
Read More Looking for Interesting Reading?The history behind Juneteenth you might not have known Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. In 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas. The Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had…
Read More JuneteenthBy Christy Clark-Pujara and Anna-Lisa Cox SMITHSONIANMAG.COM AUGUST 27, 2020 In 1834 there were even more riots against African Americans, most notably in New Haven, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and New York City. The mayor of New York allowed the destruction of African American homes and businesses to continue for days before finally calling out the state…
Read More How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White ViolenceBy Mark Guarino March 13, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EST CHICAGO — As a child in the 1950s, Amelia Cooper lived in a multigenerational home in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood that often served as a settlement house for friends of her grandfather, the blues musician Muddy Waters. Many were musicians, arriving from the rural South as Waters…
Read More A push to save landmarks of the ‘Great Migration’ — and better understand today’s racial inequitiesThe Supreme Court issued a ruling on March 9, 1841, freeing the remaining thirty-five survivors of the Amistad mutiny. Although seven of the nine justices on the court hailed from Southern states, only one dissented from Justice Joseph Story’s majority opinion. Private donations ensured the Africans’ safe return to Sierra Leone in January 1842. BTW, Connecticut Congregationalists formed the Amistad Committee, which organized a legal…
Read More Today in History: Survivors of Amistad Mutiny ReleasedCharlayne Hunter-Gault, a living connection to this history and a prominent name in television and radio news, worked on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS starting in 1978, later worked in South Africa for National Public Radio and then CNN. Her work won two Emmys and two Peabody Awards. She’d made history of her own just…
Read More Charlayne Hunter-GaultCelebrating Artists’ Portraits at the Library of Congress for African American History Month blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2021/02/celebrating-artists-portraits-at-the-library-of-congress-for-african-american-history-month/ The Family Life of Ralph Ellison blogs.loc.gov/catbird/2021/02/the-family-life-of-ralph-ellison/ Honoring African American Contributions in Medicine: Midwives blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2020/06/honoring-african-american-contributions-in-medicine-midwives/ Katherine Dunham’s Ethnographic Research in the Caribbean blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2021/02/katherine-dunham-in-the-caribbean/ Frederick Douglass Newspapers, 1847-1874: Now Online blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/01/frederick-douglass-newspapers-1847-1874-now-online/ Sojourner Truth and the Power of Copyright Registration blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2020/12/sojourner-truth-and-the-power-of-copyright-registration/ The Beauty Entrepreneur: Madam C. J. Walker blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2020/03/madam-c-j-walker/…
Read More Celebrating Black History: Blog Posts from Around the Library of CongressFully virtual this year for the first time, ASALH’s 95th annual Black History Month festival will examine the theme “The Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity.” Events open to the public include an author talk with the former astronaut Mae Jemison, a discussion on “How African-American Families Have Been Portrayed in the Media” and music…
Read More Association for the Study of African-American Life and History’s Virtual FestivalLyric soprano Leontyne Price was born on February 10, 1927, in Laurel, Mississippi. Price debuted on Broadway in April 1952. Her successful career took her to leading opera houses around the world and brought eighteen Grammy awards as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1985, Price gave her final performance at New York’s Lincoln Center in the title role…
Read More Leontyne PriceHome Security System: Marie Van Brittan Brown was the inventor of the first home security system. Her patent also laid the groundwork for the modern closed-circuit television system that is widely used for surveillance, home security systems, push-button alarm triggers, crime prevention, and traffic monitoring. Talk about Multi-function!!
Read More Marie Van Brittan Brown