A conversation with the historian about the 20th-anniversary of his seminal book Freedom Dreams, how the meaning of freedom has changed in the intervening years, the reparations debate, and more.
Du Bois’s mode of analysis in "Black Reconstruction" can help us look past so much of the ephemera of our politics to focus on the roles of power, privilege and, most important, capital in shaping our political order and structuring our conflicts.
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America is one of the greatest modern studies of revolution and counterrevolution. It’s also an extraordinary example of a materialist and class analysis of race under capitalism.
Recent critiques of “presentism” fail to see that we can’t divorce the past from the present—and that supposedly objective scholarship has long promoted racist narratives and suppressed Black history.
"I remember A League Of Their Own, and I specifically remember not seeing women that looked like me on that team," said Chanté Adams. Now she gets to play one.
George Floyd was committed to being a person that mattered. But he was also Black, so he could never catch a break. As he got older the police were always at the ready. The day Chauvin murdered him was not the first time he had met Chauvin.
I would be failing future generations if I did not to write about who owns the narrative of our country’s evolution. It is difficult to have productive discourse about liberty and justice in this country if we don’t first have command of basic truths
These seed savers are preserving and celebrating the enormous genetic diversity of collard greens. That enslaved Africans brought collard greens to the United States gives the project even more pathos.
Jelani Cobb, an executive producer of Lincoln's Dilemma, and historian Kellie Carter Jackson discuss Lincoln's legacy, his relationship with abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and how the series relates to today.
The topic is emotional. That’s not a bad thing.
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