John Harris’s The Last Slave Ships offers a comprehensive portrait of the illegal slave trade in the Atlantic, starting with the last slave ships to dock in New York Harbor.
The great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass died 125 years ago. Today, Jacobin publishes never-before-transcribed articles from Frederick Douglass’ Paper denouncing capitalism and economic inequality.
"Moments come and moment pass. But you cannot freeze them if you do not seize them," is the theme of Gene Bruskin's musical exploration of Reconstruction when this nation had the chance to do the right thing. Like then, the moment is still now.
This is the perfect time to read the entirety of Frederick Douglass’s famous speech (from 1852), and not merely because of the date on the calendar.(Dave Zirin)
New play, about Reconstruction. This was really a turning point in US history when America almost did the right thing. The South was writing new state constitutions and African Americans were getting elected to local and national offices.
Reviewer Claybourn says this new biography is likely to become the definitive one of the great 19th Century leader of the African American freedom struggle and champion of democracy.
Less than a month before his death, when a young Black man solicited his advice to an African American just starting out in the world, Douglass replied without hesitation: "Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!"
By 1871, Congress had authorized the bank to provide mortgages and business loans. Such mortgages and loans, however, were usually given to whites, creating a financial paradox -— a bank using the savings and income of black depositors to advance the economic fortunes of whites who had at their disposal mainstream banks that excluded blacks.
On Veterans day, the idea of the veteran was touted by POTUS and his supporters as an emotional counterweight to the protesting athletes. Dr. Lisa Brock reminds us that African Americans have historically had a conflictual relationship with US militarism.
Forget that Donald Trump said something commendable about Frederick Douglass--perhaps a first for Trump--the autobiography of Douglass is a classic, and reading it again is a fit way to commemorate Black History Month. Washington Post book editor Ron Charles gives ample reason why.
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