slavery

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 Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco and Leo Dominguez 1/10/22 From the founding of the United States until long after the Civil War, hundreds of the elected leaders writing the nation’s laws were current or former slaveowners. More than 1,700 people who served in the U.S. Congress in the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries owned human beings at some…

Read More More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.

Daniel Villarreal and The New Civil Rights Movement January 17, 2021 Terry Jones, a Republican lawmaker in North Dakota, has submitted a bill that would require state forms to list “American” as a racial choice option because he’s “disgusted” with how race is used by bad actors to divide the country, he says. In trying to explain how…

Read More GOP lawmaker says Black people are glad their ancestors were brought to US as slaves

Across the globe and right here at home, millions of people are being exploited for profit. Human trafficking, also known as modern slavery, affected some 24.9 million people in 2016 (the most recent year for which we have comprehensive data) and is estimated to be one of the most profitable forms of transnational crime. The 2009 UCC Synod…

Read More Human Trafficking and Global Ministries

The holidays are here, and among the many treats of the season are chocolate and hot cocoa. While these traditions provide a hefty dose of sugar, there’s a bittersweet side to chocolate’s history, too. This year, at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, a plantation museum where, as a historian, I work as the director of…

Read More Oppression in the kitchen, delight in the dining room: The story of Caesar, an enslaved chef and chocolatier in Colonial Virginia

Here is another reason to look forward to 2021 — new people’s history books. We highlight below a few upcoming 2021 titles and invite you to events we are hosting for The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: Young Readers Edition (January 11) and How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America(May 10). The…

Read More Zinn Education Project

The university and its medical system have long celebrated their founding benefactor as a staunch abolitionist. But newly surfaced documents tell a different story. By Jennifer Schuessler Dec. 9, 2020, 1:20 p.m. ET It’s a tale that has long been repeated at the university and medical center in Baltimore that bear his name: In 1807, the 12-year-old Johns…

Read More At Johns Hopkins, Revelations About Its Founder and Slavery

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

How does the history of racial slavery shape our world today? Racial slavery was at the center of the Atlantic World’s economy for centuries. One of its primary legacies is that white supremacy and anti-black racism became so deeply ingrained in the Atlantic World that they became part of the structures of society that remain…

Read More Racial Slavery in the Americas