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Prologue to Greatness: W.E.B. Du Bois and Great Barrington

David Levering Lewis Portside
Du Bois biographer David Levering Lewis delivered a speech during the Du Bois 150th Birthday Celebration. Du Bois at age 95 was more radically unorthodox than virtually any other engaged intellectual of the 20th century. The real problem was really the manipulation of race in the service of wealth.

22 Million Reasons Black America Doesn’t Trust Banks

Marcus Anthony Hunter The Conversation
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.

books

Triumph of the Underdog

Richard Moe American Scholar
Biographer Chernow "gives us a military genius who understood the full scope of the war and pursued a winning strategy," writes reviewer Richard Moe, "and a sometimes inept president who, though unschooled in politics, made his highest priority the protection of the lives and rights of freed slaves."

books

Frederick Douglass's `Amazing Job' Started With His First Book

Ron Charles The Washington Post
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.

Tidbits - November 10, 2016 - Reader Comments: This is How the Future Voted; The Rest is Up to Us; Trump and Reconstruction-Era White Supremacy; Support MST School Against Brazilian Terror; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Bertolt Brecht's message for our times; This is How the Future Voted; The Rest is Up to Us; Racism and White Nationalism up to the election and after; FBI plot?; Trump and Reconstruction-Era White Supremacy; Support MST School Against Brazilian Terror; Healthcare Justice Conference in January - planned before the election, now even more important; and more...

Tidbits - February 4, 2016 - The Bernie Generation, Bernie and After, and Hillary; Clinton's Attack on Reconstruction; Flint; Syria; Books on Black Liberation; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: The Bernie Generation, and Bernie and After, and Hillary; Clinton's Attack on Reconstruction; Backlash to Corbyn and Sanders; Flint, Racism, African Americans and the Criminal Governor Snyder; The Syrian Peace Talks; Announcements: Building on Bernie: What Comes Next; Migrant Labor in China: A Post-Socialist Transformation; #BlackLivesMatter - Books on Black Liberation

What Can Be Learned from Hillary Clinton's Slurs Against Reconstruction

Ryan Cooper The Week
Monday night, Hillary Clinton butchered Reconstruction's history. It's a good opportunity to correct the record, and glean why Lincoln really was America's greatest president. Reconstruction in reality was a briefly successful attempt to build a true democracy in the South. Clinton implies that it was Southern anger at unjust Reconstruction policy that led them to institute Jim Crow, but Jim Crow was the goal from the very end of the war.

Tidbits - September 17, 2015 - Left and Labor Dialogue on Sanders and Corbyn; A Sanders - John Lewis ticket?; David Hilliard on Black Panther film; 9/11 and Cancer; lots of announcements; and more....

Portside
Reader Comments: Left and Labor Dialogue on Sanders and Corbyn; A Sanders - John Lewis ticket?; David Hilliard on Black Panther film; 9/11 and Cancer; Labor Debate on Who to Endorse; Kim Davis; Student loans and College Costs; Sean O'Casey; Reconstruction; Announcements : Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay -Sept 17-Dec 19; Operation Condor film, Bolivia's Largest Film Ever, Coming to NYC Theaters; Witness Venezuela's Elections This December
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