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Originally published 03/22/2017
Eric Foner interviews Matt Karp about his new book on slaveholders
Karp focuses on the international ambitions of slaveholders and their control over foreign policy.
Originally published 03/20/2017
White Howard University Professor Holds Mock Slave Auction
Howard University is investigating an alleged incident in which a white professor asked his class to engage in a mock slave auction.
Originally published 03/13/2017
Yale's split with Calhoun prompts more discussion of Minneapolis lake name
Some Minneapolis Park Board members think it's worth revisiting discussion of the name of Lake Calhoun, also known by the Dakota name Bde Maka Ska, in light of Yale University's decision to remove John C. Calhoun's name from a residential college.
Originally published 03/13/2017
A Glimpse Into the Life of a Slave Sold to Save Georgetown
The story of one of the slaves sold to help keep Georgetown afloat. (And we have his picture.)
Originally published 03/09/2017
How Descendants of a Slave and a Supreme Court Justice Righted a 160-Year-Old Wrong
The family of former Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney has offered a public apology to the descendants of Dred Scott on the 160th anniversary of the landmark decision.
Originally published 03/07/2017
Carson refers to slaves as 'immigrants' in talk to HUD employees
"That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity," Carson said. "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less."
Originally published 03/06/2017
Confronting Academia's Ties to Slavery
Harvard hosts a conference examining a long-neglected topic that has suddenly become urgent.
Originally published 03/02/2017
The Man Who Exposed Higher Ed's Slave Past
How Craig Steven Wilder exposed higher education's past.
Originally published 03/01/2017
American colleges are documenting their own history of entanglement with slavery
"The fact that so many of our nation's elite institutions have histories that are entangled with the history of slavery only enhances the opportunity and the obligation."
Originally published 03/01/2017
Harvard President Drew Faust says the university is documenting its ties to slavery
It's hosting a day-long symposium to investigate slavery and universities.
Originally published 02/15/2017
Black slave inventors are finally getting some recognition from scholars
Shontavia Johnson
America's always had black inventors – even when the patent system explicitly excluded them.
Originally published 02/08/2017
U. Of Delaware's Erica Armstrong Dunbar uncovers the hidden history of the slave who escaped from George Washington's Philadelphia mansion
She tells the story in a new book, "Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge."
Originally published 02/06/2017
The History the Slaveholders Wanted Us to Forget
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Knowledge of Africa can refute stereotypes about black people and show our shared humanity.
Originally published 01/26/2017
Eric Foner describes how profits from the slave trade helped fund the start of Columbia University
Gillian B. White
Slavery, says Foner, has been ignored in the official histories of universities. This needs to change.
Originally published 01/24/2017
Columbia Unearths Its Ties to Slavery
"People still associate slavery with the South, but it was also a Northern phenomenon," Eric Foner, the Columbia historian who wrote the report, said in an interview.
Originally published 01/18/2017
Maine governor offers John Lewis an erroneous history lesson
Historians say LePage is wrong about Jim Crow laws, which legalized racial segregation.
Originally published 01/16/2017
Who Really Freed the Slaves?
Michael Hogan
We should be teaching our kids the stories about blacks who won major battles in the Civil War.
Originally published 01/13/2017
The slave trade made Scotland rich.
Stephen McLaren
Now we must pay our blood-soaked debts.
Originally published 01/05/2017
No! The Electoral College Was Not about Slavery!
Gary L. Gregg II
The opponents of the Electoral College, in attempting to undermine support for the institution, have painted it with an unfair half-truth that distorts the historical record as well as the constitutional principles undergirding the system itself.
Originally published 12/27/2016
The Forgotten First Attempt to Plant a Colony on US Soil
William Loren Katz
Shockingly (or not) it was accompanied by the establishment of slavery. First the Spanish enslaved Indians, then blacks.
Originally published 12/22/2016
Black Professor Gives Epic Response to White Student Who Proclaimed Slavery Was 'a Positive Thing'
"In the end, slavery was actually a positive thing for the world because people learned to fight for who they are." – Student
Originally published 12/19/2016
Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life's Complicated Past
In its 19th-century beginnings, New York Life Insurance sold 508 policies covering slaves. Their descendants are grappling with it.
Originally published 12/16/2016
Here's What to Tell People Who Love to Remind Blacks that the Democratic Party Was Proslavery in the 19th Century
Peter Cole
Donald Trump should probably read this, too.
Originally published 12/16/2016
How the Electoral College Protected Slavery
Paul Finkelman
It is now time to rid ourselves of the last constitutional vestige of the peculiar institution: the Electoral College.
Originally published 12/12/2016
Scholars are now focusing on the forgotten slaves: Native Americans
"Recent research has shown us that most enslaved persons in the Americas before 1700 were Indians; that Indians constituted a sizable proportion of the global slave population thereafter; and that Europeans enslaved Indians from Quebec to New Orleans, and from New England to the Carolinas."
Originally published 12/08/2016
Economists are attacking historians' recent works on slavery
"The shocking thing is how far they have deviated from the traditional strengths of history, in terms of using evidence and evaluating arguments." – Economist Paul W. Rhode
Originally published 12/02/2016
Why the history of slavery in the US South is taking centre stage once again
Christopher Lloyd
Cultural memory – the recollection of the past through books and films – increases at particular moments in time when the past demands attention.
Originally published 11/28/2016
The Grandchildren of Slaves Are Dying
Roy E. Finkenbine
"Six months ago, I lost my connection to the last generation of American slaves."
Originally published 11/21/2016
Rutgers confronts its ties to slavery in groundbreaking report
Published in a book titled "Scarlet and Black," the detailed report shows how intertwined slavery is with the early history of Rutgers, a common theme among America's colonial colleges.
Originally published 11/02/2016
Slavery's legacy remains at the core of American race problems: UN experts
"The legacy of enslavement in the United States of America remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to recognition and reparations for people of African descent," working group chair Ricardo A. Sunga III said.
Originally published 11/01/2016
In the 1850s, the future of American slavery seemed bright
Matthew Karp
That star was extinguished not by the operation of the laws of history – much less the natural evolution of the market – but by the victory of a political movement, a bloody civil war, and a social revolution across the South.
Originally published 10/25/2016
Antigua and Barbuda Asks Harvard University for Slavery Reparations
Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the United States called on Harvard University "to demonstrate its remorse and its debt to unnamed slaves from Antigua and Barbuda."
Originally published 10/24/2016
The Racial Politics of Nat Turner Tours
The subject of an acclaimed new movie, the 1831 slave revolt led by Turner is also the focus of two tours, one black and one white, in a region still divided over Turner's legacy.
Originally published 10/19/2016
Should a nation apologise for the crimes of its past?
Tom Bentley
Merely recognising the violations of colonialism does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the states that once practised it should now apologise for their historical misdeeds.
Originally published 10/18/2016
Britain is right to celebrate the abolition of slavery, but must acknowledge excesses of empire
Alan Lester
Britain's humanitarianism was part of the very fabric of imperial expansion – and reflected all its ambivalence.
Originally published 10/04/2016
The Belief that Slavery Was Solely a Southern Institution Is Bunk
Christy Clark-Pujara
It was an intrinsic part of the North's economy, particularly Rhode Island's.
Originally published 09/30/2016
History lesson horrifies parent: Blacks used to have 'strong work ethic' during slavery
Archaeologist and author Rachel Grant wrote on Twitter that she felt physically ill after her daughter brought home a 55-page packet titled "U.S. History Special Victims Unit," which she described as a "non-white male hit list."
Originally published 09/28/2016
Annette Gordon-Reed tells historians the controversy over Harvard law school's shield is different from the fight over the Confederate flag
Peter Feinman
She contrasted the Law School shield with the Confederate flag: the former was not created and has not been viewed as a symbol of slavery.
Originally published 09/28/2016
US owes blacks reparations over slavery: UN experts
The United States should give African Americans reparations for slavery, UN experts said Tuesday, warning that the country had not yet confronted its legacy of "racial terrorism."
Originally published 09/26/2016
The Horrible Lesson White Colonists Learned When Slaves Rebelled in Jamaica and Saint-Domingue During the Seven Years' War
Trevor Burnard
The lesson: They would be safe as long as they could have absolute power over their slaves. Only it wasn't true.
Originally published 09/14/2016
Manisha Sinha breaks with modern claims. Says abolitionists were key to the abolition of slavery.
In The Slave's Cause, she offers nearly 750 impassioned pages for considering abolitionism as a longstanding progressive force in American life.
Originally published 09/09/2016
Georgetown student newspaper reports descendants of slaves want $1 billion fund
A group of descendants of the 272 slaves sold by Georgetown University in 1838 is seeking to establish a $1 billion foundation in partnership with the university and the Jesuits of Maryland to fund scholarships for descendants.
Originally published 09/09/2016
San Francisco school board president calls for the renaming of schools tied to slavery
School Board President Matt Haney wants to rename Washington High School after poet Maya Angelou, a San Francisco native.
Originally published 09/09/2016
John Carroll University to study history of Jesuit slaveholding, role of namesake
The school joins other colleges across the country that have examined ties to slaveholding and the Confederacy.
Originally published 09/02/2016
Georgetown's Plan Spurs Hopes for a Shift in How Universities Confront Ties to Slavery
No other university has given descendants of its slaves legacy status in the admission process.
Originally published 09/02/2016
Slavery and the National Anthem: The Surprising History Behind Colin Kaepernick's Protest
"I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world." - Jackie Robinson
Originally published 09/01/2016
Georgetown Will Give Admissions Preferences to Descendants of Slaves It Sold
In an effort to atone for its profit off the sale of 272 slaves almost two centuries ago, Georgetown University will, among other things, give preferential treatment in the admissions process to descendants of those slaves.
Originally published 09/01/2016
'Demeaning' Slavery Education Game No Longer Part of Georgia School Lesson Plan
A Georgia school is under fire after one of its teachers introduced her students to a "demeaning" slavery education game about the Underground Railroad.
Originally published 08/27/2016
The U.N. Is Commemorating Haiti's Role in Ending the Slave Trade. Here's Why.
Manisha Sinha
The nation was a beacon for the anti-slavery cause.
Originally published 08/27/2016
Missouri woman builds slave cabin to bring community together
She opened the library in 2013, partly to try to start a conversation about race in her community. She spent about $150,000 on it -- yet almost no one cared or came. So she built a slave cabin.
Originally published 08/18/2016
Snopes debunks slavery Internet meme
A widely circulated list of historical "facts" about slavery dwells on the participation of non-whites as owners and traders of slaves in America.
Originally published 08/12/2016
The French are coming to grips with their history as a slavery power
"Mapping Memories of Enslavement," a project whose website has just launched, hopes to facilitate the analysis and commemoration of this history and its continuing effects.
Originally published 08/11/2016
Rebuilding a Former Slave's House in the Smithsonian
Few Reconstruction-era residences from communities of former slaves are still standing today. The Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture will feature the reassembled structure of one.
Originally published 08/08/2016
Brazil Acknowledged History of Slavery in the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony
Including Brazil's history of slavery in the opening ceremony brought cheers from many on Twitter.
Originally published 08/04/2016
Rio de Janeiro's Forgotten Legacy of Slavery Shadows the Olympics
More than 2 million slaves came through Rio de Janeiro.
Originally published 07/27/2016
Yes, Slaves Did Help Build the White House
Michelle Obama, speaking at the Democratic Convention, said she lived in a home built by slaves. Some were taken aback, but history supports her.
Originally published 07/26/2016
A Worker Broke a Window at Yale and Shed Light on History
The vestige of American slavery had long gone politely ignored amid the polished Oxonian interiors of the rarefied university.
Originally published 07/05/2016
The Secret Black History of the Revolution
Alan Gilbert
As we know all too well, the Revolutionary War was not fought so that all men could be free, but its role in creating the seeds of abolition should not be forgotten.
Originally published 07/04/2016
Did a Fear of Slave Revolts Drive American Independence?
Robert G. Parkinson
To the founders, separation from Britain was about racial fear and exclusion as much as it was about inalienable rights.
Originally published 07/01/2016
Slavery as free trade
Blake Smith
The 18th-century thinkers behind laissez-faire economics saw slavery as a great example of global free trade.
Originally published 06/21/2016
5 Quick Questions About: The Free State of Jones
Sussan Ayala Rodriguez
A historian sifts the facts from the myths.
Originally published 06/21/2016
If You Want to Understand Slavery It Helps to Visit the Places Where Slaves Lived
Pearl Duncan
The actors in the new "Roots" did just that. So did I. The experience was transformative.
Originally published 06/21/2016
Historians of slavery are now looking at their own institutions
That's a change from the past when this kind of research was largely ignored.
Originally published 06/17/2016
It's Time to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday
Karl Jacoby
This was the day – June 19, 1865 – in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally were freed.
Originally published 06/15/2016
Moving to Make Amends, Georgetown President Meets With Descendant of Slaves
More than a century after Georgetown University used some of the profits from the sale of 272 enslaved African-Americans to help ensure its survival, John J. DeGioia, the university's president, took a first step on Monday toward making amends to their descendants.
Originally published 05/21/2016
History professor Greg O'Malley to create new public database about the slave trade
The website, Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, will begin featuring data about the second voyage many slaves took to their final destination.
Originally published 05/12/2016
Poll: Millennials More Open to Idea of Slavery Reparations
A vast majority of white Americans say there should not be reparations for African-American descendants of slaves, but more than half of blacks say it's a good idea and Hispanics are almost evenly split, according to a new poll.
Originally published 05/02/2016
Native Americans Were Kept As Slaves, Too
Andrés Reséndez
Native Americans had enslaved each other for millennia, but with the arrival of Europeans, practices of captivity originally embedded in specific cultural contexts became commodified, expanded in unexpected ways, and came to resemble the kinds of human trafficking that are recognizable to us today.
Originally published 04/29/2016
The historian and cartographer Bill Rankin has developed a new way to visualize slavery
His maps show that the gradual decline of slavery in the north was matched by its explosive expansion in the south.
Originally published 04/16/2016
272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?
In 1838, the Jesuit priests who ran the country's top Catholic university needed money to keep it alive. Now comes the task of making amends.
Originally published 04/14/2016
Finally, the U.S. Steps Closer to Racial Healing With a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Twenty-three leaders recently convened in Richmond, Virginia to plan a national commission on racial violence against black people.
Originally published 04/07/2016
Harvard makes amends for erasing African Americans from history
Joined by Congressman John Lewis, President Faust yesterday unveiled a plaque dedicated to Titus, Venus, Bilhah, and Juba, who lived and worked at Wadsworth House in the 1700s.
Originally published 03/31/2016
James C. Cobb warns that cleansing American culture of ties to slavery will be harder than you think
James C. Cobb
Few historic American institutions are free of the touch of slavery's history.
Originally published 03/31/2016
Harvard President Drew Faust Will Dedicate Plaque to Honor Harvard Slaves
She will undertake several initiatives to unearth and reflect on Harvard's history of slavery.
Originally published 03/18/2016
Runaway slave ads are to be collected in a massive database
The project at Cornell aims to compile all North American runaway slave advertisements, never before systematically collected, into a collaborative database.
Originally published 03/10/2016
Dinesh D'Souza Claims in a New Film that the Democratic Party Was Pro-Slavery.
Michael Todd Landis
Here's the sad truth.
Originally published 03/01/2016
Historian and physician Vanessa Worthington Gamble interviewed about the disturbing story of the founder of gynecology
His name was J. Marion Sims and he experimented on black female slaves.
Originally published 02/29/2016
Freedom, Not Slavery, Is the Root Cause of Economic Growth
Robert E. Wright
The new histories of capitalism and slavery have got things backwards.
Originally published 02/25/2016
Nearly 20 percent of Trump's supporters disapprove of Lincoln freeing the slaves
And it gets even worse. An additional 17 percent of respondents said they weren't sure.
Originally published 02/25/2016
Harvard replaces "house master"
Following more than two months of deliberation, Harvard announced Wednesday that the university's house masters will now be called faculty deans.
Originally published 02/23/2016
Historic slavery plantations of Virginia now teach visitors about slavery, but they didn't always
A survey indicates slavery became part of the curriculum only since the 1980s at Monticello and other places.
Originally published 02/22/2016
Historians are rewriting the history of slavery and capitalism
The new insight is that profit motives were characteristic of American slavery.
Originally published 02/18/2016
The Surprising Development that Helped Bring about the End of the So-Called Dark Ages
Peter Frankopan
It was slavery in Europe, which made an elite hugely wealthy.
Originally published 02/11/2016
Video of the Week: The legacy of slavery in New York City
The different ways slavery affected the ministry of Trinity Church.
Originally published 02/05/2016
Why Black History Month should never begin with slavery
Shaun King
Harriet Tubman is an important part of black history, but her struggle shouldn't be the starting point for enlightening our children.
Originally published 02/05/2016
United Nations Calls On U.S. To Pay African Americans Reparations For Slavery
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Originally published 01/21/2016
After Outrage Publisher Pulls Happy Slaves Children's Book
A children's book showing happy slaves in the South was pulled off the market last weekend after a major controversy about its contents.
Originally published 01/18/2016
America's Other Original Sin
Rebecca Onion
Europeans didn't just displace Native Americans—they enslaved them, and encouraged tribes to participate in the slave trade, on a scale historians are only beginning to fathom.
Originally published 01/14/2016
Governor of Former Slave State: We've Never Had Racist Laws
So says Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina.
Originally published 01/12/2016
Report assesses conditions of S.C. slave dwellings
The surprising finding is that many are in good condition.
Originally published 12/31/2015
Slaves or wage slaves
Jerry Toner
Incentives, rewards, bonuses and bonding experiences – Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists
Originally published 12/23/2015
Two Ways We Might Have Solved Slavery No One Wants to Talk About
Thomas Fleming
This neglect has worsened race relations.
Originally published 12/16/2015
2 historians say America needs a monument that excoriates slavery
Blain Roberts and Ethan Kytle, professors at California State University, Fresno, expressed their views in an op ed in the NYT.
Originally published 12/14/2015
Lincoln's Struggle With The Thirteenth Amendment
Christian Samito
Amending the Constitution broke with Lincoln's long-held belief that it should not be altered because the work of its Framers could not be improved.
Originally published 12/10/2015
Why Won't Obama Apologize For US Slavery?
How Reparations Debate For Black Americans Has Kept Congress From Apologizing For Slave History
Originally published 12/02/2015
The United States Was Late to End Slavery
Patrick Rael
The story of what it took to finally bring about its demise involves the amazing alliance struck between abolitionists and slaves.
Originally published 11/11/2015
An 8th grade teacher asked her students to evaluate Sean Wilentz's claim that the Constitution didn't protect slavery
Stephanie Kugler
Her students concluded he was wrong.
Originally published 11/11/2015
White Scholar Insists Churches Should Talk About Reparations For Descendants Of Slaves
"All over the Hebrew Bible, this is what it says to do when you steal — you give it back sevenfold," says Drake University ethicist Jennifer Harvey.
Originally published 11/11/2015
Student group opposes Harvard Law seal, citing slavery ties
The seal, depicting three bundles of wheat, is meant to pay tribute to Royall, a wealthy merchant who donated his estate to create the first law professorship at Harvard University. But Royall made much of his wealth through the slave trade.
Originally published 11/01/2015
60 Minutes reports on the Smithsonian and the Slave Wrecks Project's journey to recover the first artifacts known to be preserved from a slave ship
Historian Lonnie Bunch reveals his long hunt for a slave ship for the forthcoming Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Originally published 10/27/2015
Historians' debate over capitalism is heating up
The new critiques are drawing a response.
Originally published 10/22/2015
Free Black Man Who Helped Slaves Escape Posthumously Pardoned
Samuel Burris was a free black man who got caught trying to help slaves escape in 1847.
Originally published 10/21/2015
How Texas Teaches History
Ellen Bresler Rockmore
Grammar matters, especially when textbooks tackle the subject of slavery.
Originally published 10/19/2015
The Surprising Role of the United States Military in Undermining Slavery
Matthew J. Clavin
You can see this in the nascent military industrial complex in antebellum Pensacola, which helps explain why the city was a mecca for fugitive slaves.
Originally published 10/08/2015
The Shameful Error McGraw-Hill Made Can't Be Fixed Simply by Covering It Up with Little Stickers
Pearl Duncan
We need to bring slavery out of the shadows so when we walk down the street we can say, "Slaves Built that."
Originally published 10/08/2015
Are Transatlantic Slave Trade Reparations Due?
A NYT panel is convened to answer the question posed to David Cameron last week.
Originally published 10/06/2015
Sean Wilentz is wrong about the Constitution and slavery
Patrick Rael
According to Sean Wilentz's opinion piece in the September 16 New York Times, the Constitution of 1787 did not make slavery a national institution. Wilentz badly misinterprets the antislavery sentiment evident at the constitutional convention of 1787.
Originally published 09/29/2015
7 Slavery Myths Debunked
Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion
The Irish were slaves too; slaves had it better than Northern factory workers; black people fought for the Confederacy; and other lies, half-truths, and irrelevancies.
Originally published 09/28/2015
Our forgotten slavery horror: The shameful, untold history of America and the Cuban slave trade
Stephen Chambers
As Cuba opens, it's time to recognize our proxy role in Cuba's slave trade, and the Monroe Doctrine's real purpose
Originally published 09/25/2015
The Horror the Constitution of 1787 Protected Wasn't Just Slavery. It Was the Domestic Slave Trade.
Calvin Schermerhorn
Sean Wilentz argues the document was fundamentally anti-slavery. But then there's the slave trade.
Originally published 09/17/2015
Was the Constitution of 1789 Anti-Slavery or Pro-Slavery?
Ian J. Aebel
The fact that the Constitution has evolved into a freedom protecting document does not change the fact that it was originally written in a manner that protected and prolonged the institution of slavery.
Originally published 09/16/2015
Constitutionally, Slavery Is No National Institution
Sean Wilentz
It is one of the most destructive falsehoods in American history to say otherwise.
Originally published 09/15/2015
Teaching Slavery to Reluctant Listeners
Edward E. Baptist
Whenever we dredge up the past, we find that the rusty old chains we rake from the bottom are connected to some people's present-day pains and others' contemporary privilege.
Originally published 09/08/2015
After Dylann Roof, Ken Burns's Civil War documentary seems flawed
Christopher Dickey
As Eric Foner noted at the time it was released, it largely overlooks the cause of the Civil War: slavery.
Originally published 09/07/2015
'Slave Trade' video game altered after social media backlash
An educational video game has been edited following a social media backlash over a scene depicting slaves being packed into a ship.
Originally published 08/27/2015
The U.S. has 35,000 museums. Why is only one about slavery?
John J. Cummings, III
"Here's why I opened the country's first slavery museum."
Originally published 08/26/2015
Julian Bond's Great-Grandmother a "Slave Mistress?" How the New York Times Got it Wrong
Martha S. Jones
When telling the history of slavery we must admit its brutal complexity. The term slave mistress leaves too much unsaid, blanketing over the assault and coercion in many enslaved women's lives.
Originally published 08/25/2015
Rhode Island Church Taking Unusual Step to Illuminate Its Slavery Role
The church, like many others in its day, supported slavery and profited from it even after the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed and slavery had been banned in the state.
Originally published 08/22/2015
From the Folks Who Brought You the Civil War: The Political Legacy of Slavery
Mark Stoll
Southern slaveowners Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson injected the word "freedom" into politics. But they didn't mean freedom for everybody. We live with that legacy.
Originally published 08/22/2015
How bad are the textbooks used in Texas now?
Publishers didn't actually cave. Students will still be learning about Jim Crow.
Originally published 08/14/2015
These Are Words Scholars Should No Longer Use to Describe Slavery and the Civil War
Michael Todd Landis
Our scholarship has changed, so should our language.
Originally published 08/12/2015
West Point historian, in full military dress, explains that slavery was the cause of the Civil War
Col. Ty Seidule, head of the department of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point "lowers the boom," says Salon, on "idiots" who think slavery wasn't the cause.
Originally published 08/04/2015
Why Didn't Jefferson Go After Slavery and Pull It Out Root and Branch?
M. Andrew Holowchak
The answer lies in his understanding of the Greek concept of the kairotic moment.
Originally published 07/28/2015
Sven Beckert's List of the Ten Books on Slavery You Need to Read
Sven Beckert
They include books by Ira Berlin, Eric Foner, and Thavolia Glymph. (Not mentioned: David Brion Davis.)
Originally published 07/24/2015
Connecticut Democrats drop Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson names from annual fundraising dinner
Under pressure from the NAACP, the state Democratic Party will scrub the names of the two presidents from its annual fundraising dinner because of their ties to slavery.
Originally published 07/20/2015
Grave of first black male slave freed by Abraham Lincoln in 1841 found in cemetery of former Minnesota psychiatric hospital
Researchers believe they found the grave of a man who could be considered the first black male slave freed by Abraham Lincoln, tracking his final resting place to the cemetery of a former Minnesota psychiatric hospital.
Originally published 07/17/2015
Why Are So Many Distraught to Learn that Slavery Was the Cause of the Civil War?
Dale Schlundt
It's because this conflicts with what they learned in school. (And we hate to rethink things.)
Originally published 07/14/2015
Video of the Week: Next time someone questions America's history of racism, show them this video
From the dehumanization of black people to justify slavery to the policies of segregation and mass incarceration that followed emancipation, the country has always made it difficult for many minorities to rise out of their literal and figurative shackles.
Originally published 07/13/2015
Daintiness, Blather, and the Confederate Flag
Leslie Kitchen
"I agree that it is a symbol of their heritage, but theirs is a heritage that has been saturated in racism from its very beginnings. They know this. They just don't like to talk about the truth."
Originally published 07/13/2015
The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed
A new BBC documentary tells how a trove of documents lays bare the names of Britain's 46,000 slave owners, including relatives of Gladstone and Orwell
Originally published 07/09/2015
The Supreme Court Case that Proves that the Antebellum South Wasn't Really Concerned with States Rights
Roy Finkenbine
Texas politicians who just approved textbooks that claim the South seceded over states rights need to read this article.
Originally published 07/07/2015
The Memorial Where Slavery Is Real
America has only one federally funded slave memorial—and it's been falling apart.
Originally published 07/06/2015
On Wall Street: Slavery Lost, Found, and Remembered
Pearl Duncan
The slave market that once existed on Wall Street is long gone. But we shouldn't let absence define our memory.
Originally published 07/06/2015
Where are America's memorials to pain of slavery, black resistance?
Erecting historical markers and memorials of both slavery and black resistance would be the first among many necessary steps in breaking the cycle of the past.
Originally published 06/30/2015
The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
Andrew Kahn and Jamelle Bouie
Watch the slave ships plow the Atlantic in an ever increasing race from Africa to the Americas.
Originally published 06/25/2015
This Is How They Teach South Carolina Students About Slavery
Casey Quinlan
Although some of the lesson plans on the website mentioned the horrible circumstances in which slaves lived, the way slavery and slaves were described uses a lot of passive voice.
Originally published 06/25/2015
U-Va. acknowledges its slave history
Historians and others are finding new ways to acknowledge the university's historic ties to slavery, to give a more complete picture of its foundation and early years, as the school approaches its bicentennial.
Originally published 06/23/2015
African American family records from era of slavery to be available free online
A million and a half handwritten records compiled about newly freed slaves in the 1860s will be a treasure trove for those seeking to trace their ancestry
Originally published 06/23/2015
Have you seen me? A memorial to slavery.
Alexi Morrissey, artist
Have You Seen Me? transforms the 1980s "kid on the milk carton" advocacy campaign into a memorial for those lost during the Slave Trade.
Originally published 06/23/2015
Slavery's Long Shadow
Paul Krugman
Despite changing attitudes on several fronts, race in America is an issue that won't go away.
Originally published 06/08/2015
What Led this Historian to Write a Novel About Indians and Slavery?
Tiya Miles
It was the extraordinary opportunity to explore the emotional lives of the people she'd been studying.
Originally published 06/05/2015
Alabama Senate Votes To Rename Landmark Bridge Named After A Former Grand Dragon Of The KKK
Fifty years after the events of Bloody Sunday transpired on the Edmund Pettus Bridge — a bridge named after a former Ku Klux Klan leader — the Alabama Senate voted on a resolution to change the landmark's name.
Originally published 05/31/2015
Coup for Smithsonian's African-American museum: Remnants of a slave ship found
Director Lonnie Bunch says he's been searching for such a slave ship since he took the job in 2005.
Originally published 05/25/2015
Slavery in New Hampshire?
Yes. And now there's a monument to remind people.
Originally published 05/19/2015
The Frightening Parallels between 19th Century American Slavery and 21st Century Sex Trafficking
Calvin Schermerhorn
Many of the ways present-day sex traffickers do business would look familiar to slave traders supplying "fancy maids" -- females sold for sexual exploitation -- to buyers in the South.
Originally published 05/19/2015
Slate inaugurates a history of slavery
America's defining institution, as told through the lives of nine enslaved people. Enroll in the college course you wish you'd taken, learning from acclaimed historians and writers, alongside Slate's Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion.
Originally published 05/19/2015
Should historians refer to slaves as slaves?
It's not just an academic debate for historians of American slavery.
Originally published 05/18/2015
Slaves of history
Jori Lewis
If you descend from slaves in Senegal, your shame is an open secret and your life limited by stigma and disrespect
Originally published 05/17/2015
60 Minutes: The Smithsonian's African-American history museum is set to debut soon
It took over 80 years, but a museum dedicated to African-American history and culture is finally taking shape on the National Mall in Washington.
Originally published 05/13/2015
Loyola professor who called slavery 'not so bad' loses lawsuit against New York Times
In January 2014, Walter Block, the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar endowed chair in economics at Loyola, was quoted in a New York Times article as saying slavery "was not so bad -- you pick cotton and sing songs."
Originally published 05/04/2015
What Else You Should Know About Baltimore
Calvin Schermerhorn
In the first half of the nineteenth century it was known as the slave traders' capital city.
Originally published 05/01/2015
The War of Northern Aggression
James Oakes
A leading Civil War historian challenges the new orthodoxy about how slavery ended in America.
Originally published 04/29/2015
Should Ben Affleck Have Been Embarrassed by the Discovery of His Ancestor's Connection with Slavery?
Pearl Duncan
The hidden history we don't know what to do with.
Originally published 04/19/2015
Ben Affleck Asked PBS to Not Reveal Slave-Owning Ancestor
Ben Affleck requested that the PBS documentary series "Finding Your Roots" not reveal he had a slave-owning ancestor, according to emails published online by whistleblower site WikiLeaks, and the information never appeared on the program.
Originally published 04/14/2015
A Confederate General and His Slave
Kevin M. Levin
One of the people a Confederate general had to say good-bye to at the end of the Civil War was his slave.
Originally published 04/09/2015
Historian argues we have wrongly overlooked the importance of the military occupation of the former Confederacy
Eric Herschthal
Historian Gregory P. Downs says the Southern states ratified the 13th Amendment ending slavery because Andrew Johnson left 100,000 troops there after Appomattox, refusing to end the war until they agreed to end slavery.
Originally published 04/04/2015
How the Slave Trade Built America
Maurie D. McInnis
The slave trade is not merely a footnote or a side story in the history of American slavery, but was central to its modernization and continuation.
Originally published 03/19/2015
Noam Chomsky on the Roots of American Racism
George Yancy and Noam Chomsky
Slavery and oppression of nonwhites were built into the foundations of the United States, and they didn't end in 1865.
Originally published 03/17/2015
Black and White?
Carver Clark Gayton
How race relations look through the eyes of the great-grandson of a slave who looked white.
Originally published 03/09/2015
Thomas Jefferson and I
J.F. Mouhot
In the eyes of many, Thomas Jefferson embodies the contradictions of the young American republic.
Originally published 02/27/2015
NYT Magazine profiles the first slavery museum in the US
It opened in Louisiana in December.
Originally published 02/18/2015
How a Look Inside a Slave Ship Turned the Tide Toward Abolition
Sheldon Cheek
For the first time, British society could grasp the horrific conditions experienced by people who had little control over their fate. Centuries later, the haunting imagery of the ship's cargo still resonates.
Originally published 02/17/2015
Harvard exhibition unearths fresh insights by shining light on song style with deeply racist roots
It's a difficult exhibition to explore, but one that its organizers hope will promote a deeper understanding of America's brutal history of slavery, segregation, and racism, and their legacy.
Originally published 02/16/2015
George Washington, Slave Catcher
Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Our first president relentlessly pursued the fugitive Ona Judge.
Originally published 02/11/2015
President Obama, the National Prayer Breakfast, and Slavery
Joshua D. Rothman
So vital was Christianity to the southern defense of slavery that some historians have estimated that ministers penned roughly half of all proslavery literature in the decades after 1830.
Originally published 01/19/2015
Harsh world of slavery focus of Louisiana plantation museum
Unlike other plantation museums along the Great River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the newly opened and under-construction Whitney Plantation focuses squarely on the plight of slaves.
Originally published 01/16/2015
Who Regrets Slavery? Not Steve Scalise
Martin Longman
The third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership didn't just attend a neo-Nazi conference in 2002, he also led opposition to a 1996 resolution in the state House that expressed mere "regret" for the institution of slavery.
Originally published 01/12/2015
David Brion Davis's surprise finding was that it wasn't rationalists who undermined slavery's defense, but Christians
Allen C. Guelzo
A review of his new book on slavery puts his contribution into perspective
Originally published 12/13/2014
Does the new 'Exodus' movie whitewash the Bible?
The new biblical epic from director Ridley Scott, "Exodus: Gods and Kings," has a race problem.
Originally published 12/10/2014
Louisiana plantation tours skittish on slavery history
"There are places that don't want to talk about it," said Aaron Sheehan-Dean, a history professor at LSU.
Originally published 12/08/2014
#Blacklivesmatter Till They Don't: Slavery's Lasting Legacy
Daina Ramey Berry and Jennifer L. Morgan
The historical value of black life and the casual killing of Eric Garner.
Originally published 12/04/2014
The Surprising Reason Why Racial Inequality Is so Great in the United States.
Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico
The data show that slavery's a big cause.
Originally published 11/03/2014
He helped write the Bill of Rights. Now his slave quarters will be renovated.
The repairs will be paid for by a donation of $10,000,000 to the home of James Madison.
Originally published 10/23/2014
Slavery in America: Back in the Headlines
Daina Ramey Berry
People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don't.
Originally published 10/17/2014
Add the University of Virginia to the list of universities actively confronting their association with slavery
The university is holding a symposium this week.
Originally published 10/15/2014
First and only slavery museum to open in Louisiana
It will be housed in the Whitney Plantation.
Originally published 10/14/2014
Why I Stand by What I Wrote About the Dutch
Russell Shorto
It goes without saying that the Dutch founders of New York were bigoted—just like all Europeans of the time. But they also laid the roots of tolerance.
Originally published 10/10/2014
Slave photo discovered from Robert E. Lee's home
The photograph was unveiled Thursday at the Arlington House plantation overlooking the nation's capital that was home to Lee and dozens of slaves before the Civil War.
Originally published 09/28/2014
'Gone With the Wind' at 75: Masterpiece or historical mess?
As its 75th anniversary approaches, even the film's distributor acknowledges the Civil War epic's portrayal of slavery is dated and inaccurate.
Originally published 09/25/2014
This Is What Mythologizing History Looks Like in 2014
Alan Singer
It's time to call out mythologizing when we see it.
Originally published 09/15/2014
This Is What Happens When We Try to Reduce the Evil of Slavery to a Simple Formula
Jim Downs
The Economist's withdrawal of a controversial book review should be considered a "teachable moment." Here's how to teach it.
Originally published 09/10/2014
'The Economist' Has a Slavery Problem
Greg Grandin
Multiple commentaries from the journal show a pattern of making sure white people aren't taken for total villains when discussing slavery.
Originally published 09/09/2014
We still lie about slavery: Here's the truth about how the American economy and power were built on forced migration and torture
Edward E. Baptist
All these decades later, our history books are filled with myths and mistruths. It is time for a true reckoning.
Originally published 08/08/2014
How Our Impressions of an Author Shape What Gets Published, Even on the Comments Page
Pearl Duncan
One African-American historian's experience.
Originally published 07/30/2014
Irish slave owners were compensated historian reveals
Hogan writes that the British paid slave owners over $30 million in compensation for the loss of their 'property.'
Originally published 07/15/2014
Arizona charter school history book says whites envied "freedom" of slaves
The school, Heritage Academy, is using two of Skousen's most popular books, "The 5,000 Year Leap" and "The Making of America."
Originally published 05/09/2014
Why Racists Always Make This Claim
Roy E. Finkenbine
For students of antebellum American slavery, the recent racist musings of Cliven Bundy have a familiar ring.
Originally published 05/05/2014
What Should Historians Make of "Black Confederates?"
Glenn Brasher
Most of the sightings were likely of slaves serving as body servants for their soldier masters.
Originally published 04/28/2014
Slavery Nostalgia Is Real, and It's Dangerous
David Firestone
In the South, even some powerful people seem to miss the days of the Confederacy.
Originally published 04/17/2014
Why Solomon Northup's Story Matters Today
Stacey Robertson
Slave owners then and human traffickers today use sexual assault to control their victims.
Originally published 04/12/2014
Historians Against Slavery? (Interview)
Randall Miller
Historians have joined the effort to help put the struggle against modern slavery in context.
Originally published 04/02/2014
How David Brion Davis came to study slavery
Drew Gilpin Faust
David Brion Davis, age eighty-six, has published the final volume in the trilogy he inaugurated with The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (PSWC) and continued with The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (PSAR) in 1975.
Originally published 04/02/2014
Where David Brion Davis fits in the historiography of slavery
Drew Gilpin Faust
Since the middle of the twentieth century, our understanding of the American past has been revolutionized, in no small part because of our altered conceptions of the place of race in the nation's history.
Originally published 03/23/2014
The Four Biggest Libertarian Myths About the Civil War
James Oakes
Andrew Napolitano was peddling snake oil on The Daily Show recently about Lincoln and slavery. Here are the facts.
Originally published 03/16/2014
The Despicable Racist Backlash Against "12 Years a Slave"
Elwood Watson
It didn't take long for the haters to come out.
Originally published 03/11/2014
The historian who unearthed "Twelve Years a Slave"
Sue Eakin spent her career rescuing Solomon Northup's memoir from obscurity.
Originally published 03/11/2014
Caribbean adopts plan to seek slavery reparations
The Caribbean Community will seek a formal apology and debt cancellation from former colonizers.
Originally published 03/09/2014
American Finance Grew on the Back of Slaves
Edward E. Baptist and Louis Hyman
Asset securitization made slavery possible.
Originally published 03/05/2014
The Untold History Beneath "12 Years"
Manisha Sinha
NYC's sordid history of slavery.
Originally published 02/25/2014
Once Upon a Time Governments Paid Slave Reparations ... to Slaveowners
Greg Grandin
And why not? The early modern world knew just how much was built on the backs of slave labor. Would that we were able to acknowledge that today.
Originally published 02/11/2014
George Africanus: Work to uncover former slave's life
Research will be done to find out more about the life of a west African slave who became a successful entrepreneur in England.
Originally published 01/23/2014
The Horrors "12 Years a Slave" Couldn't Tell
Adam Rothman
What a Civil War soldier's diary tells us about Solomon Northup's ordeal.
Originally published 01/23/2014
Slavery Is Having a Hollywood Moment. What About the Rest of Black History in America?
Michael Kazin
A steady diet of slavery movies misses the long-term oppression -- and resistance -- of black Americans.
Originally published 01/16/2014
Generations a Slave: Unlawful Bondage and Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Julita Braxton
A half century before, in the courts of the neighboring Upper South state of Maryland, Charles Mahoney successfully challenged the legality of his enslavement.
Originally published 01/15/2014
We Need to Include Reparations in the Story of Solomon Northup
Roy E. Finkenbine
The protagonist of "12 Years a Slave" was also a leader in the slavery reparations movement.
Originally published 01/10/2014
160 year-old Documents Intentionally Destroyed in Franklin County, N.C.
Documents dating back to the 1840s were burned in the county incinerator.
Originally published 01/09/2014
'It's Just How He Carries Himself'
Chiwetel Ejiofor's Stature Carries '12 Years a Slave.'
Originally published 12/30/2013
Ani DiFranco Cancels Retreat Scheduled to Be Held on Former Slave Plantation
The retreat was to be held at the Nottoway Plantation and Resort, built by slave labor in 1859.
Originally published 12/30/2013
Harvard scholar makes interactive map showing how slaves fought back
Dr Vincent Brown wants to highlight organisation of rebel slaves and dispel myths.
Originally published 12/16/2013
Random House Acquires 1800s Prison Memoir
Random House paid a reported six figures for the manuscript.
Originally published 12/16/2013
Who Ain't a Slave?
Greg Grandin
Historical fact and the fiction of 'Benito Cereno.'
Originally published 12/10/2013
Peter Kolchin honored for research on U.S. slavery
Kolchin has taken a comparative approach between U.S. slavery and Russian serfdom.
Originally published 12/10/2013
Before the Battles and the Protests, the Chains
Three new markers will be unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama that describe the city's role in the slave trade.
Originally published 12/03/2013
Archaeologists discover slave artifacts where Ga. highway project will cross plantation site
The plantation formerly belonged to a wealthy Savannah attorney.
Originally published 11/26/2013
Steve McQueen: New Readership for '12 Years a Slave' Is 'Amazing'
The book is #3 on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
Originally published 11/18/2013
UC Davis professor's holistic look at slavery shortlisted for prestigious National Book Award
Alan Taylor already won a Pulitzer in 1996 -- now he's up for the National Book Award for "The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832."
Originally published 11/14/2013
White America and the Burden of Slavery
Vincent Intondi
It is long overdue that whites, collectively, acknowledge, apologize, and condemn slavery.
Originally published 11/12/2013
Photos Reveal Harsh Detail Of Brazil's History With Slavery
Brazil has what may be the world's largest archive of photography of slavery.
Originally published 11/12/2013
'Ask a Slave' talks race and gender issues in the age of YouTube
The web series is the brainchild of Azie Dungey, a former actor at Mount Vernon.
Originally published 11/12/2013
Baseball and slavery collide in Richmond
A new AA stadium will be located across the street from one of the central slave trading sites in the country.
Originally published 11/06/2013
The History Channel Set to Remake 'Roots'
The network acquired the rights to the successful miniseries from Alex Haley's estate.
Originally published 11/06/2013
The Passion of Solomon Northrup
Eric Herschthal
If the film is "true" to anything in the book, it should be true to Northup's voice, not his facts; that voice is what makes "12 Years a Slave" so enduring.
Originally published 11/01/2013
History lessons: '12 Years a Slave' book and film stir a national conversation
Sometimes pop culture can be the best history teacher.
Originally published 10/29/2013
David Blight Says '12 Years' Is A Story The Nation Must Remember
"We love being the country that freed the slaves ... [but] we're not so fond of being the country that had the biggest slave system on the planet."
Originally published 10/29/2013
'Homo History,' Photo Collection Compiled By Jeffrey Gent, Showcases Vintage Shots Of Gay Couples
Jeffrey Gent presents a website of vintage photographs featuring homosexual couples.
Originally published 10/28/2013
Confronting the Legacies of Slavery
Laurent Dubois
How to best deal with the transnational history of slavery.
Originally published 10/28/2013
Respect the Congressman's Wife
Mary Lou Judd Carpenter
It's a harder job than it looks.
Originally published 10/27/2013
Why Did "12 Years a Slave" Get the Hollywood Treatment, Not Frederick Douglass's Autobiography?
Jeannine Marie DeLombard
As it turns out, the movie owes much to Douglass.
Originally published 10/23/2013
Caribbean Nations to Seek Reparations, Putting Price on Damage of Slavery
A group of fourteen nations has sought legal aid against the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands.
Originally published 10/22/2013
America's Top Colleges and Universities Have a Hidden Legacy of Slavery [INTERVIEW]
David Austin Walsh
MIT's Craig Wilder on the role slavery played in the founding and rise of the Ivy League.
Originally published 10/18/2013
Before Solomon Northup: Fighting Slave Catchers in New York
Marjorie Waters
Solomon Northup wasn't the only black man in New York to face abduction from slave catchers.
Originally published 10/18/2013
Hayek Image
Originally published 10/18/2013
Thomas Foley, former House Speaker, dies at 84
Foley presided over the House from 1989 to 1994.
Originally published 10/18/2013
The Surprisingly Central Role of Slave Women in "12 Years a Slave"
Brenda E. Stevenson
Along with "Roots" and "Sankofa," the new Steve McQueen movie presents the most striking images of slave women put to celluloid.
Originally published 10/18/2013
Historian Examines How Three 19th-Century Authors Recoiled from Technology
Phys.org highlights Rosalind Williams' work exploring the responses of important authors to technology.
Originally published 10/17/2013
Gilder Lehrman to host online live chat with Jill Lepore October 18 at 10:00am
Readers are encouraged to submit questions beforehand.
Originally published 10/14/2013
Fredericksburg site of proposed U.S. slavery museum heads to auction Oct. 31
The 38 acres are scheduled to be sold Oct. 31.
Originally published 10/10/2013
Review of Craig Steven Wilder's "Ebony and Ivy"
Luther Spoehr
Early American colleges were saturated by slavery.
Originally published 09/25/2013
'12 Years a Slave' prompts effort to recognize efforts of Joseph Logsdon in reviving tale
Logsdon shares credit with Sue Eakins, who is the more widely-cited expert in the media.
Originally published 09/24/2013
Don't Write First World War Women Out of History
Kate Adie
It was a time of female munitions workers, welders and engineers. As the commemoration nears, remember them.
Originally published 09/24/2013
MIT historian Craig Wilder documents links between universities and slavery
"[The] economy was heavily rooted in the slave trade."
Originally published 09/24/2013
Memento Mori
Lewis H. Lapham
The death of American Exceptionalism -- and of me.
Originally published 09/13/2013
Slave who died in 1798 gets funeral
Fortune, owned by Dr. Preserved Porter, lies in state at the Hartford statehouse.
Originally published 08/15/2013
What the History of Slavery Can Teach Us About Slavery Today
Brenda E. Stevenson
Modern human trafficking functions in a remarkably similiar way to the antebellum slave trade -- only in secret.
Originally published 08/12/2013
Was Bass Reeves — a former slave turned deputy U.S. marshal — the real Lone Ranger?
Art Burton listened intently as the old man on the other end of the phone cleared his throat and began telling him a story. Burton had only been researching the life of Bass Reeves for a short while but that afternoon what Reverend Haskell James Shoeboot, the 98-year-old part-Cherokee Indian, was about to tell him would persuade Burton he had stumbled upon one of the greatest stories never told.Born in 1838, Bass Reeves was a former slave-turned-lawman who served with the U.S. Marshals Service for 32 years at the turn of the 20th century in part of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas known as Indian Territory. Though he was illiterate, Reeves became an expert tracker and detective – a man who, in Burton's words, "walked in the valley of death every day for 35 years and brought in some of the worst outlaws from that period"....It reaffirmed what Burton had suspected: that (Armie Hammer's caucasian portrayal aside in the movie The Lone Ranger) Bass Reeves — perhaps the first black commissioned deputy marshal west of the Mississippi — could well have been one of the greatest lawmen of the Wild West. But most people hadn't heard of him. Over the next 20 years, Reeves would become an obsession for Burton, culminating in a very interesting hypothesis, which he puts forward in his book Black Gun, Silver Star....
Originally published 08/08/2013
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Towards a Radical New Theory of Anglo-American Slavery, and Vindication of Free Markets
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is International Business Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels.With luck it will help to vindicate the fathers of liberal government and the free market in the 17th and 18th Centuries, falsely accused until now of abetting - or promoting - the great crime of race-based African slavery.For academic orthodoxy holds that John Locke and the great Whig thinkers of the Glorious Revolution (1688) helped to design and foster the economic system of hereditary slavery that shaped Atlantic capitalism for a century and a half.From that it is but a step to dismiss the moral claims of liberalism as so much humbug, to write off all the talk of justice, natural rights, inviolable contracts and government by consent as the self-interested catechism of oppressors. As Samuel Johnson said acidly: "How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"
Originally published 08/03/2013
Slave Revolt Rides on Broken Down Railroad
Bruce Chadwick
Tellin' Man Midtown International Theater Festival Dorothy Strelsin Theater 312 W. 36th Street New York, N.Y. Each summer, the festival stages fifty or so plays of different varieties at the midtown theater complex.There were five well known slave revolts in America prior to the Civil War: in New York in 1712, along the Stono River, in South Carolina, in 1740, in Richmond, Virginia in 1800, the Denmark Vesey revolt in Charleston in 1822 and the Nat Turner revolt in Virginia in 1831. Paul Gray's new play, Tellin' Man seems to be based most closely on the rebellion led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Virginia, in 1800. In Gray's play, as in the Prosser revolt, other slaves secretly told the owners of the rebellion and the slave owners worked with law enforcement to quash it.The Tellin' Man is the story of James, who betrayed his fellow slaves, and what happened to him, his family and his friends after the leaders of the revolt were arrested. It is a narrow focus play about slavery and the eternal hope of those in bondage that they could be free.
Originally published 08/03/2013
New evidence contributes to unprecedented portrait of enslaved life at James Madison's Montpelier
ORANGE, VA.- The Montpelier Foundation today announced findings from new archaeological excavations at the lifelong home of James Madison – Father of the Constitution, Architect of the Bill of Rights, and Fourth President of the United States. Discovered by teams of professional archaeology staff, students and visitors participating in special "Archaeology Expeditions," two newly revealed subfloor pits provide an initial footprint for field slave quarters on the Montpelier landscape."Montpelier is unique among archaeological sites in the United States with regards to our ability to recreate and visualize the experience of enslaved life," said Matthew Reeves, Ph.D., Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration at James Madison's Montpelier. "Because the fields have lain fallow since Madison's time, the sites we are discovering are virtually undisturbed. We are meticulously documenting available evidence from the sites so we can begin to reconstruct the farm in a way that will authentically represent the complexity of life on the plantation."...
Originally published 07/19/2013
Stephen Kantrowitz, Sydney Nathans, and Brett Rushforth finalists for 2013 Douglass book prize
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition announced on Thursday the finalists for the $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded to books dedicated to African American history.This year's finalists are Stephen Kantrowitz's More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 (Penguin), Sydney Nathans's To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker (Harvard) , and Brett Rushforth's Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous & Atlantic Slaveries in New France (University of North Carolina).Stephen Kantrowitz is professor of history and director of graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nathans is professor emeritus of history at Duke, and Brett Rushforth is associate professor of history and director of graduate studies at William & Mary.The winner will be announced in the fall, and the award will be presented in New York City in February.
Originally published 07/16/2013
If Only Trayvon Had Freedom Papers
Stephanie Jones-Rogers
Trayvon Martin needed a slave pass.
Originally published 07/03/2013
Sean Coons: Frederick Douglass -- New Tea Party Hero?!
Sean Coons is a writer and teacher in Los Angeles. Last week, Frederick Douglass — who escaped slavery at 20 years old and whose words would help bring an end to the institution — was honored with a statue in the U.S. Capitol's Emancipation Hall in Washington, D.C. In the 1960s and '70s, far left activists like Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party and Angela Davis of Communist Party USA incorporated Douglass' call to agitation in their various causes' platforms. Yet in a fascinating turnaround, the brilliant abolitionist, writer and orator is developing a new – and perhaps, unexpected – political identity: Tea Party hero.The recent rise in interest in Douglass by conservatives stems from their belief that his life epitomizes the self-reliance they champion, and his writings help provide justification for small government. It may be surprising to some that the fiery, black radical abolitionist of the 19th century, who once called Fourth of July celebrations "a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages," could be inspiring to a Tea Party patriot. Or that social conservatives could find common cause with the man who bitterly attacked America's Christianity as "a lie." But that is exactly what is happening.
Originally published 07/02/2013
The Terror of Being Black at Gettysburg
Kevin M Levin
For the unknown number of African Americans rounded up by the Confederate army, who called Gettysburg and the surrounding region home, Union victory mattered little. For them a new birth of freedom would have to wait just a little longer.
Originally published 06/27/2013
Would We Have the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments If Lincoln Had Lived? Maybe Not.
Alan J. Singer
Credit: Wiki Commons.In recent weeks I have conducted a series of workshops with middle school and high school social studies and English teachers grappling with incorporating new Common Core literacy standards in their classrooms. Two things I have repeatedly stressed are the importance of understanding historical context before students can successfully interpret primary source documents and the role of the historian in providing a critical analysis of text and exploring multiple interpretations or perspectives on historical events.
Originally published 06/21/2013
Slate: George W. Bush's ancestor a notorious slave trader
BUNCE ISLAND, Sierra Leone—Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight while serving in office, and at least 25 presidents count slave owners among their ancestors. But new historical evidence shows that a direct ancestor of George W. and George H.W. Bush was part of a much more appalling group: Thomas Walker was a notorious slave trader active in the late 18th century along the coast of West Africa.Walker, George H.W. Bush's great-great-great grandfather, was the captain of, master of, or investor in at least 11 slaving voyages to West Africa between 1784 and 1792....
Originally published 06/14/2013
Chicago Maroon remembers Robert Fogel
Economics professor Robert Fogel, who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for applying economic analysis to history and taught for at the University for over 30 years, died Tuesday morning. He was 86.In an e-mail sent out over the listhost for economics majors on Wednesday, department chairman John List said that Fogel had died of pneumonia contracted after a mild heart attack.Fogel, along with Douglass North—with whom he shared the Nobel Prize—is considered a pioneer of "cliometrics"—the practice of using quantitative methods to analyze history. Called a "bomb thrower" by the New York Times after winning the Nobel Prize, Fogel's economic approach to history often challenged conventional wisdom. His 1974 book Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery found that slavery was more economically efficient than free agriculture. Fogel's analysis led him and co-author Stanley Engerman to conclude that because slaves were valuable economic assets, slaveowners were inclined to treat them well. While acknowledging that slaves were oppressed in ways that could not be represented through data, Fogel concluded that the demise of slavery was for political reasons, not economic ones....
Originally published 06/13/2013
Robert W. Fogel, an innovative and Nobel Prize-winning economic historian, dies at 86
Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel Prize-winning economic historian who used empirical data in innovative and iconoclastic ways, most notably to dispute longheld assumptions about why slavery collapsed as an institution in the United States, died June 11 at a rehabilitation facility in Oak Lawn, Ill. He was 86.The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter-in-law Suzanne Fogel. Dr. Fogel, a Chicago resident, spent much of his career at the University of Chicago and directed its Center for Population Economics.Dr. Fogel shared the 1993 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences with Douglass North, then of Washington University in St. Louis. Both winners were on the 1960s vanguard of a field known as cliometrics, which merges economic theory with statistical analysis of hard numbers raked from the past; Clio is the muse of history in Greek mythology....
Originally published 06/11/2013
Monument to Michelle Obama ancestor toppled in Georgia
REX, Ga. – Police in Georgia are investigating after a monument dedicated to one of first lady Michelle Obama's relatives was knocked over in suburban Atlanta.Clayton County Commissioner Sonna Singleton tells WSB-TV that a stone monument to Michelle Obama's great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Shields, was pushed over and will need to be inspected for cracks. The report was aired Monday.Officials say Shields was born into slavery in the mid-1800s and later settled in Rex, Ga., -- about 15 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta....
Originally published 06/10/2013
NH governor signs bill granting freedom request made by slaves in 1779
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Fourteen slaves who petitioned the New Hampshire Legislature for their freedom during the Revolutionary War were granted posthumous emancipation Friday when the governor signed a largely symbolic bill that supporters hope will encourage future generations to pursue social justice.A group of 20 slaves who had fought in the war submitted a petition to the New Hampshire General Assembly on Nov. 12, 1779, while the war was still being fought. They argued that the freedom being sought by colonists should be extended to them, as well, and maintained that "public tyranny and slavery are alike detestable to minds conscious of the equal dignity of human nature."...
Originally published 06/09/2013
UPenn's Stephanie McCurry to Lead First MOOC on History of Slavery
David Austin Walsh
Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.Stephanie McCurry, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and a distinguished scholar of the Civil War era, will be leading a new massive online open course this fall about the history of slavery in the United States. It will be based on her popular UPenn course, "The Rise and Fall of the Slave South," a survey-level class.The course, which has yet to be officially titled, is the product of the partnership between UPenn and the popular MOOC provider Coursera.Professor McCurry says that she became interested in teaching a MOOC after spending three years as undergraduate chair at the university, during which she saw a decline in the number of enrollments in history classes.MOOCs offered an opportunity to shake up the field."I became interested in pedagogical and curricular questions, and I'd already begun a series of initiatives within my department to move away from standard survey/AP-style courses."
Originally published 06/02/2013
The Real Uncle Tom and the Unknown South He Helped Create
Thomas Fleming
Illustration for 1853 edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Credit: Wiki Commons.Today's readers of Uncle Tom's Cabin have no idea that there was a real Uncle Tom. Neither did the readers of the 1850s. His name was Josiah Henson. He was born a slave in Maryland in 1789. Harriet Beecher Stowe admitted that his story was part of the inspiration for her novel. But she never adequately explained why her fictional Uncle Tom was so different from the real one.
Originally published 05/28/2013
Hearing set on Fredericksburg's attempt to force the sale of proposed slavery museum site
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Attorneys for L. Douglas Wilder are due in court to respond to the city of Fredericksburg's plan to sell 38 acres where the former governor wants to build the National Slavery Museum.A hearing is set for Tuesday morning in Fredericksburg Circuit Court. It's the latest development in Wilder's quest to build a museum telling the nation's history of slavery. Before he can do that, he must settle a large tax bill and get fundraising back on track....
Originally published 05/23/2013
First lady lauds preservation of slave quarters
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama said Wednesday that stories of toil and sweat by slaves once held at a historic home within sight of the White House are an important part of U.S. history, including her own personal story, and are "as vital to our national memory as any other."The first lady commented as American Express announced its donation of $1 million to the White House Historical Association to preserve Decatur House and pay for education programs for children. The nearly 200-year-old house is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and operated by the association.Most of the money will be spent to preserve the building's former slave quarters, where about 20 men and women "spent their days serving those who came and went from this house" and their nights "jammed together on the second floor of the slave quarters, all the while holding onto a quiet hope, a quiet prayer that they, too, and perhaps their children, would someday be free," Mrs. Obama said....
Originally published 05/23/2013
Va. GOP nominee: Three-fifths clause "anti-slavery"
The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia has called the Constitution's original clause to count blacks as three-fifths of a person an "anti-slavery amendment."In an April 28, 2011 statement while he was a Senate candidate, conservative minister and lawyer E.W. Jackson held up the three-fifths clause as an "anti-slavery" measure. The context of his statement was to attack President Obama after a pastor at a church service he attended referred to the three-fifths clause as a historical marker of racism."Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states," Jackson, an African-American, said in his statement....The clause was demanded by Southern proponents of slavery as a way of enhancing their congressional representation. They wanted slaves to be counted as full persons but settled on three-fifths. People of African descent would have had no real rights either way. The inclusion of the clause greatly enhanced the South's political power and made it harder to abolish slavery. The clause was effectively eliminated after the Civil War by the Thirteenth Amendment....
Originally published 05/21/2013
Monticello works to include slavery
Monticello is one of the region's most popular landmarks, bringing in tourists from around the country to view the mansion and garden of Thomas Jefferson.But it's also a former plantation with deep racial history that's often been overlooked on tours and in public dialogue.Monticello opened in 1923, and for the first 50 or so years there was little, if any, mention of slavery."For a long time it wasn't a topic that was talked about," said Gary Sandling, the vice president of visitor programs and services for Monticello. "There would have been talk of servants, or field hands, or a skilled workforce," he said....
Originally published 05/15/2013
Slave cabin in SC to be restored
Curators at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture are working with restoration experts to dismantle an antebellum slave cabin on Point of Pines Plantation in Edisto Island, S.C. The cabin was donated to the museum last month by the Edisto Island Historical Society. The two-room cabin, which measures 16 by 20 feet, is believed to be in its original location and will become part of the "Slavery and Freedom" exhibition in Washington when the museum opens its doors in 2015."Slavery is one of the last great unmentionables in public discourse," said Lonnie Bunch, director of the museum. "The cabin allows us to humanize slavery, to personalize the life of the enslaved, and frame this story as one that has shaped us all. [Slavery] is not just an African American story."The museum had been searching for a slave cabin to display for its permanent collection. The cabin will be displayed prominently in the museum, visible from three levels. Although the cabin will be reconstructed on-site, visitors will not be able to enter or touch the cabin because of its fragility....
Originally published 05/12/2013
Thomas Jefferson's Nightmare
Thomas Fleming
Incendie de la Plaine du Cap. - Massacre des Blancs par les Noirs, 1833.This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming's new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Part two of a three-part series (read part one here).
Originally published 05/05/2013
George Washington: The Forgotten Emancipator
Thomas Fleming
George Washington at Yorktown, by Auguste Couder. P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming's new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.
Originally published 04/23/2013
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Did African-American Slaves Rebel?
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter. One of the most pernicious allegations made against the African-American people was that our slave ancestors were either exceptionally "docile" or "content and loyal," thus explaining their purported failure to rebel extensively. Some even compare enslaved Americans to their brothers and sisters in Brazil, Cuba, Suriname and Haiti, the last of whom defeated the most powerful army in the world, Napoleon's army, becoming the first slaves in history to successfully strike a blow for their own freedom.
Originally published 03/28/2013
Escaping Slavery in Washington Territory
Robin Lindley
When we think of the cruel legacy of slavery and the bloody Civil War that ended this vile institution, it's unlikely that images of the verdant, sparsely populated Washington Territory soon come to mind. But settlers brought the seeds of the war with them, and issues of slavery, race, secession, and civil rights divided communities and loyalties in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle public historian Dr. Lorraine McConaghy and co-author Judy Bentley uncover and detail a fascinating story of this era in Washington Territory in their new book Free Boy: A True Story of Slave and Master (University of Washington Press). Based on extensive research, they chronicle the odyssey of a young slave, Charles Mitchell, who escaped from slavery in Olympia to freedom in Victoria, Canada.
Originally published 03/25/2013
Who Really Ran the Underground Railroad?
One of the genuine pleasures of teaching African-American Studies today is the satisfaction of being able to restore to the historical record "lost" events and the individuals whose sacrifices and bravery created those events, never to be lost again. Few institutions from the black past have attracted more attention recently from teachers, students, museum curators and the tourism industry than the Underground Railroad, one of the most venerable and philanthropic innovations in our ancestors' long and dreadful history in human bondage. But in the zeal to tell the story of this great institution, legend and lore have sometimes overwhelmed historical facts. Separating fact from fiction -- always an essential part of telling it like it really was -- has required a great deal of effort from a number of scholars. Doing so only makes the sacrifices and heroism of our ancestors and their allies all the more noble, heroic and impressive....
Originally published 03/25/2013
Slavery, Holocaust never OK as political fodder, but Cuccinelli's history on faith was right
RICHMOND, Va. — Ken Cuccinelli learned last week that it's foolhardy to invoke slavery to make a political point.The presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee set off a furor when Democratic Party video surfaced of him comparing the 19th century abolition struggle that triggered the nation's deadliest war with today's anti-abortion movement.In remarks made in June 2012 to a Family Foundation gathering of Christian conservatives in Williamsburg, Cuccinelli connected the dots between the role of churches in the early 19th century played in fomenting the movement to contain and eradicate slavery to that of evangelicals in today's moral crusade against abortion....
Originally published 03/17/2013
Tracy Thompson: The South Still Lies About the Civil War
Tracy Thompson is the author of "The New Mind of the South." This excerpt comes from a longer excerpt of her book posted at Salon.In the course of our conversation, Yacine Kout mentioned something else—an incident that had happened the previous spring at Eastern Randolph High School just outside Asheboro. On Cinco de Mayo, the annual celebration of Mexico's defeat of French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, a lot of Hispanic students brought Mexican flags to school. The next day, Kout said, white students brought Confederate flags to school as a message: This is our heritage.
Originally published 03/14/2013
Slavery tough role at Colonial Williamsburg
Before Erica Hubbard could portray an enslaved housekeeper, which she'll do this weekend at Colonial Williamsburg, she had to learn some things about life in revolutionary times — including how slaves interacted with their masters circa 1776.These lessons are so painful that some African American actors simply can't bear to learn them. Even as Colonial Williamsburg and other historic sites have tried to do justice to the story of slavery and attract more minority visitors, they've sometimes had difficulty persuading black actors to take jobs interpreting enslaved figures.It was easy to see why as Hubbard was being schooled on slavery in 18th-century Virginia one recent Sunday by two men from Colonial Williamsburg's theatrical division....
Originally published 03/11/2013
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: How Did Harriet Tubman Become a Legend?
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter. In 1849, a young woman hurried along a path cutting through a marsh in Poplar Neck, Md., near the town of Preston. She was a slave, barely 5 feet tall. She was scarred from several beatings. She alternated between walking and running, like thousands of other slaves had before her, desperately hoping to cross the Mason-Dixon Line to the get to the North, to freedom in Philadelphia. With a great deal of luck and skill, she made it. And what did she do once she was free? Unlike virtually any other person before her or after, this fugitive slave turned around and walked back into slavery, counterintuitively, in order to free other slaves. And for this, she would become a legend.
Originally published 03/07/2013
New Hampshire to consider honoring a 233-year-old petition from slaves seeking freedom
CONCORD, N.H. — When 20 slaves petitioned New Hampshire two centuries ago seeking their freedom, lawmakers decided the time wasn't right and delayed action.Now, 233 years later, legislators in one of the nation's whitest states have decided the time is right to consider the request. A Senate committee on Wednesday unanimously recommended the full body posthumously emancipate the 14 petitioners who never were granted freedom.Woullard Lett, a member of the Manchester NAACP, said it's never too late to right a wrong....
Originally published 03/05/2013
Author and historian Walt Bachman uncovers the story of Minnesota slavery
In the annals of emancipation, Minnesota is recognized as one of the "free states."But when author and historian Walt Bachman began digging into his family history, he uncovered substantial evidence that as late as the 1850s, slaves were kept by officers at Fort Snelling and Fort Ridgely, in full knowledge of — and even subsidized by — the government.When these slaves were sold to civilians, they continued to live in Minnesota under the bonds of slavery, and their children were born into slavery."Slavery in the North was not tied to agriculture or industry, as it was in the South. They typically worked as house servants," said Bachman."In Minnesota, there were never large gangs of farm workers, or auction blocks. There weren't those trappings of the worst forms of slavery," he said. "But there is ample evidence of brutality towards slaves in Minnesota, including a slave who was whipped to death by her Army officer master. Slavery, wherever it was practiced, was a pernicious institution, and Minnesota was no exception."...
Originally published 02/27/2013
Database lets Britons find slave-owning ancestors
A new database launched Wednesday lets Britons curious about their family history uncover some potentially uncomfortable information - whether their ancestors owned slaves.Researchers at University College London spent three years compiling a searchable listing of thousands of people who received compensation for loss of their "possessions" when slave ownership was outlawed by Britain in 1833.About 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds - the equivalent of 40 percent of all annual government spending at the time - after the freeing of slaves in British colonies in the Caribbean, Mauritius and southern Africa."This is a huge bailout," said Keith McClelland, a research associate on the project. "Relatively speaking, it is bigger than the bailout of the bankers in recent years."Compensation for slave-owners was opposed by some abolitionists, who argued it was immoral, but it was approved as the political price of getting the 1833 abolition bill passed.
Originally published 02/25/2013
Jonathan Zimmerman: What's Wrong With the Slavery Math Lesson?
Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of education and history at New York University. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."In 1941, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People released a report condemning racist school textbooks in New York City. Music books routinely referred to blacks as "darkeys," while literature anthologies called them "coons" or "Sambos." Worst of all, American history textbooks depicted slavery as a genteel institution developed by benevolent white Southerners to "civilize" savage, ignorant Africans.All of these books were profoundly offensive to the city's African-American population, of course. But they were also full of lies, as NAACP secretary Walter White emphasized. "This study was made not on a basis of racial sensitiveness or pride," White wrote, describing the NAACP's textbook report, "but on the highest plane of historical accuracy and objectivity." Indeed, the report drew on research by pioneering black historian Carter G. Woodson to refute the textbooks' cheery portrait of life under slavery.
Originally published 02/14/2013
How Do I Decode Slave Records?
For many African Americans the paper trail back to your ancestral origins hits a wall once you reach the slavery era. During the hunt for information about my great-great grandmother, Jane Gates, who was born into slavery in 1819, we were able to find her in the 1870 census, the oldest census to list all African Americans by name. Before then, few counties listed slaves by name, so we shifted gears and searched the "slave schedules" for the 1860 and 1850 census information for slave owners named Gates. However, we weren't able to find anyone under that name who owned a slave that was around her age. This means that she was owned by someone with a surname other than Gates, and the only way to find her by using records would be to undertake a systematic search of the estate papers, wills and tax records, and other documents of every slave holder in Allegany County, Md....
Originally published 02/12/2013
VA Historical Society's slave name database
CHESTERFIELD, Va. — The Virginia Historical Society is going on the road to spread the word about its database of slave names.Historical society staff will hold the first of five presentations Monday in Chesterfield on the project, which helps scholars and family historians examine the state's slave-holding past. Called "Unknown No Longer," the database now includes more than 10,000 names and 1,500 digital images of documents....
Originally published 02/05/2013
Emancipation Proclamation Sesquicentennial Events Offer a Window into Current Historiography Debate
Vanessa Varin is Assistant Editor, Web and Social Media at the American Historical Association.January 1, 2013, marked the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the general historical consensus is that slavery was at the root of the conflict, questions about the role of the proclamation in defining the Civil War and 19th century race relations continue to dominate the field. In the past few weeks, Washington, D.C., has hosted two events on the topic: A panel discussion at the National Archives (NARA), chaired by Annette Gordon-Reed and featuring James Oakes, Eric Foner, James McPherson, and Ed Ayers, and a more intimate lecture led by Foner at the Wilson Center and sponsored by the National History Center. The well-attended events were an opportunity to promote this history to the public, and a window into the current state of the debate over how we should understand the document and its centrality to the Civil War.
Originally published 02/04/2013
Mark Auslander: Enslaved Labor and Building the Smithsonian -- Reading the Stones
And what erudition. He can even read stone. Only he never figures out that the veins in the marble of Diocletian's baths are the burst blood vessels of slaves from the stone quarries.
Originally published 02/03/2013
The Caribbean Origins of American Slavery
Andrea Stuart
The Barbadoes Mulatto Girl. Engraving published in London, 1779. Via Wiki Commons.
Originally published 01/31/2013
History-rich Georgia island wins second look on taxes
DARIEN, Ga. — Residents of a tiny barrier island in Georgia on Tuesday won a temporary reprieve from property tax increases that they feared would drive them from their historic community.Taxes rose by as much as 1,000 percent last year on Sapelo Island, where the country's largest population of Geechees lives. Sometimes called the Gullahs, the Creole-speaking descendants of African slaves have lived on the island and along the coast of the Southeast for more than two centuries.McIntosh County officials say their land has long been undervalued. But on Tuesday, the county's Board of Equalization sided with the residents and ordered a reassessment of their property....
Originally published 01/28/2013
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: What Was the 2nd Middle Passage?
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root.(The Root) -- 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro No. 16: What was the second Middle Passage?Thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by David Eltis and David Richardson, we know that about 388,000 Africans were transported directly to the United States over the course of the slave trade, which ended officially in 1808. This brutally cruel and disruptive phase of the trade, as all American schoolchildren should be taught, is known as "the Middle Passage." But what is often left out of many survey courses is the second Middle Passage, and that dark chapter in American history involved far more black people than were taken from Africa to the United States. It was also uniquely cruel and brutally destructive. And it unfolded during the era when cotton was "king."
Originally published 01/23/2013
"Django Unchained's" White Abolitionist Vision
Stephen Kantrowitz
Jamie Foxx as Django Freeman in Django Unchained.No one could possibly mistake Quentin Tarantino for William Lloyd Garrison, but the director's Django Unchained nevertheless belongs to the tradition of antebellum white abolitionism. The film powerfully evokes a South, and a people, entirely under the sway of slaveholders' sadistic passions. This intellectual lineage explains why its depiction of slavery is so potent, and so wrong.
Originally published 01/23/2013
The Hidden Link Between Illegal Immigrants and Fugitive Slaves
Stanley Harrold
A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves by Eastman Johnson, 1860-1864.Originally posted on the UNC Press Blog.
Originally published 01/23/2013
Paul Finkelman: 2nd Amendment Passed to Protect Slavery? No!
It serves no purpose to make historical arguments that are demonstrably wrong, misleading and inconsistent.
Originally published 01/15/2013
Thom Hartmann: The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery
"The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states."
Originally published 01/10/2013
Does Slavery Still Exist Today?
Robert E. Wright
Credit: Flickr/Inheritance magazine.
Originally published 05/26/2012
Who Invented Memorial Day?
Jim Downs
"Contrabands at Headquarters of General Lafayette," by Mathew Brady, 1862.As Americans enjoy the holiday weekend, does anyone know how Memorial Day originated?On May 1, 1865, freed slaves gathered in Charleston, South Carolina to commemorate the death of Union soldiers and the end of the American Civil War. Three years later, General John Logan issued a special order that May 30, 1868 be observed as Decoration Day, the first Memorial Day -- a day set aside "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land."
Originally published 02/07/2011
On Going Viral: Reflections on Why the South Really Seceded
James W. Loewen
1865 cartoon.On Sunday, January 9 [2011], the Washington Post published my op-ed article, "5 Myths about Why the South Seceded." Even before it appeared in print, I knew it had touched a nerve. At its website, the Post dates the article at the stroke of midnight Saturday, but by 7:00pm that evening I had received at least thirty emails about it, a portent of the torrent to come. By Monday, the piece had received more than half a million hits, more than any other Post story. During the next week, almost four thousand other sites, from Forbes to The Times of India, linked to it or discussed it. Still other sites simply reprinted the article, which now appears at, for example, the Black Pride Network and the South Carolina Agricultural Trade News.
Originally published 11/15/2010
The Election of 1860 and Secession—to Preserve Slavery
Douglas Egerton
When news of Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency reached South Carolina on Nov. 8, 1860, joyful Charlestonians took to the streets as if their candidate had won. They erected liberty poles near the battery, and booming cannon saluted the Palmetto flag. "The tea has been thrown overboard," editorialized the Charleston Mercury. "The revolution of 1860 has been initiated."
Originally published 12/12/2008
Ancestors Who Built the White House
Pearl Duncan
African-American ancestors were deprived as slaves, but African slaves, working alongside other Americans, built America.
Originally published 08/12/2007
It's Time to Face the Whole Truth About the Atlantic Slave Trade
Sheldon M. Stern
"Readers must understand that this terrible traffic in millions of human beings had been ... a joint venture."
Originally published 08/09/2004
Reparations for Slavery? It's an Old Idea
Roy E. Finkenbine
Reparations for Slavery: An Old and Not-So-Strange Idea
Originally published 02/14/2004
The Racist History of the Democratic Party
Wayne Perryman
History reveals that every piece of racist legislation that was ever passed and every racist terrorist attack that was ever inflicted on African Americans, was initiated by the members of the Democratic Party.
Originally published 03/22/2017
Rockville's Confederate Monument Belongs at White's Ferry
Jim Loewen
The monument was false to Maryland's history.
Originally published 03/21/2017
Democracy Demands Wisdom In Its Citizens
Steve Hochstadt
Conservative Republican politicians don't believe that "democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens". They attack the findings of geology, evolutionary biology, and climate science. They support the spread of fake news and promote alternative facts. They disparage the media in general. There is nothing new about the attacks on truth and knowledge by the Trump administration except its shamelessness.
Originally published 01/19/2017
An Inaugural Prayer: Stretch Yourself as Person and President – to Stretch us too…
Gil Troy
Although I am no theologian, America desperately needs inaugural prayers. Here is the benediction I would offer, if invited to Donald Trump's Swearing-in (and no, I wouldn't boycott – Democrats should remember all the civics lectures they gave Trump about respecting the people's choice when they expected Hillary Clinton to win, and now attend graciously).
Originally published 12/23/2016
"It Can't Happen Here, Can It?" Will Trump and Climate Deniers Purge American Science and Technology?
Infinity, Limited
Is the incoming Trump administration planning a purge of government climate science research and researchers? If historical cases such as Soviet persecution and McCarthyism offer any precedent, such a purge will prove destructive to both careers and the national interests of the United States – and give other countries the opportunity to hire top-quality American researchers.
Originally published 09/05/2016
What Would a Clinton Presidency Mean for U.S.—Cuban Relations?
Cuba Libre
When it comes to Cuba, will President Hillary Clinton continue the controversial work of her predecessor? The answer is yes. And that is both good and bad news.
Originally published 06/17/2016
Technology and Politics: Neither good, nor bad, nor neutral
Infinity, Limited
The Economist aptly applied "Technology is neither good, nor bad, nor neutral," Mel Kranzberg's first law of the history of technology, to its recent discussion of technology and politics. While the revolutionary power of digital data and social media are great, possibly greater are the opportunities for repressive states to observe dissidents, attack opponents, manipulate public perceptions, and even create alternate realities to stay in power. Such efforts have a long history, but the digital politics offers much greater potential and peril.
Originally published 05/10/2016
Ten Questions for Yale President Peter Salovey
Jim Loewen
Every year that it retains the name Calhoun College, Yale declares on its campus that John C. Calhoun was a hero worthy of the honor of having a building named for him.
Originally published 03/09/2016
The German Jew Who Became an Ottoman Pasha
Gil Troy
Mehmed Emin Pasha was born a Jew in Germany, converted to Christianity and then Islam on his way to being named a ruler of an Ottoman province.
Originally published 02/25/2016
Lies the Neo-Confederates Told Me
Jim Loewen
He who steals my book title for this travesty besmirches my good name.
Originally published 02/22/2016
For Voters, Facts Should Be the Lifeblood of Democracy
Stone Age Brain
But if voters suddenly understood issues and facts, would we live in a democratic Camelot? Until 1988, no one knew.
Originally published 12/13/2015
Quicksand: Or How and Why the U.S. Created its Very Own Middle Eastern Quagmire
There's No There There
Our endless addiction to war will never end while Americans continue believing we can do anything to anybody and get away with it.
Originally published 11/22/2015
The American Reaction to Refugees, 1848-1924
Mark Byrnes's Facing Backwards
The sad demand that only Christian refugees should be admitted to the U.S. reminds this historian of an awful American tradition.
Originally published 07/25/2015
The Meaning of Donald Trump
Steve Hochstadt
Trump is just riding a wave. Soon he'll go down. What matters is what other Republicans do with their most vocal and extreme voters.
Originally published 07/23/2015
Celebrating John C. Calhoun in Minnesota!
Jim Loewen
John C. Calhoun is remembered for what he did in the latter half of his adult life. In those years, he rationalized slavery, suppressed freedom of speech, and legitimized secession. Surely that legacy should persuade Minnesotans to rename Lake Calhoun.
Originally published 07/19/2015
What Does Rockville, Maryland's Confederate Monument Tell Us About the Civil War? About the Nadir? About the Present?
Jim Loewen
It's time to remove this monument.
Originally published 07/16/2015
The Myth of Liberal Media
Steve Hochstadt
One of the most significant political myths is about the "liberal media", the supposed tilt of American public media to the left. This claim by Republicans is nearly as old as I am. It was false when it began, and it still is, although less so.
Originally published 07/14/2015
What should Charleston do with John C. Calhoun?
Jim Loewen
After Charleston renames the street and perhaps removes the statue, it can put up good markers explaining what had been there and why it was changed.
Originally published 07/09/2015
It's Time to De-Confederatize "The American Pageant": An Open Letter to David Kennedy
Jim Loewen
Most teachers still think that the Civil War was fought over states' rights. It's time for textbooks to correct the record. Let's start with "The American Pageant."
Originally published 01/06/2015
The Battle between Journalism and Fiction: Doug Underwood on Genre Bending Journalists and Literary History (Interview)
Robin Lindley
To read this interview click here.
Originally published 07/09/2014
Israel's Strategy and America's Mythology
Ira Chernus's MythicAmerica
Israel's real goal in attacking Hamas is obvious, but ignored by the U.S. mass media.
Originally published 06/20/2014
Abraham Lincoln and the Corwin Amendment
Liberty and Power
Most serious historical overviews of the Civil War contain at least a brief mention of the Corwin Amendment, the last-ditch compromise effort to protect slavery where it existed by enshrining it in the Constitution. They also do so tepidly and seldom acknowledge it as anything more than a historical footnote.
Originally published 01/07/2014
History of Sundown Suburbs Threatens the Existence of Diverse Suburbs
Jim Loewen
An end to suburban racial segregation can only be made through action in affluent white suburbs like Kenilworth, Illinois.
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