“In 2004, at the Unity journalists of color convention in Washington, Gwen Ifill coined the phrase “missing white woman syndrome,” joking that “if there is a missing white woman you’re going to cover that every day.” It is not that these white women should matter less, but rather that all missing people should matter equally. Race should…
Read More Missing White Woman SyndromeEbony 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 inequities