The Atlantic's Ta-nehisi Coates sparks months of debate with his contention that
The Civil War Isn't Tragic. "The Civil War is our revolution. It ended slavery, and birthed both modern America, and modern black America.
That can never be tragic to me."
[more inside]
posted by Danila
on Aug 25, 2011 -
116 comments
Some people have claimed that Barbie is really about giving girls the image of an empowered woman. There can be little doubt of empowerment when it comes to
Black Moses Barbie -
she fights for freedom and has all the coolest playsets and accessories.
posted by yeloson
on Apr 3, 2011 -
9 comments
How Slavery Really Ended in America On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel.... [T]the laws of the United States were clear: all fugitives must be returned to their masters. The founding fathers enshrined this in the Constitution; Congress reinforced it in 1850 with the Fugitive Slave Act; and it was still the law of the land — including, as far as the federal government was concerned, within the so-called Confederate states. The war had done nothing to change it. Most important, noninterference with slavery was the very cornerstone of the Union’s war policy. President Abraham Lincoln had begun his inaugural address by making this clear, pointedly and repeatedly. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists,” the president said. “I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Apr 2, 2011 -
95 comments
This evening in Charleston, SC, a Secession Ball! When they don their "
period formal" hoop skirts tonight some ladies may rue the fact that have no slaves to pull their corsets tight. The ladies and their escorts, many of whom are
members of the
Sons of Confederate Veterans who would like us to believe that the Civil War was not about slavery. The
NAACP, and
others disagree. The NAACP has organized a peaceful
protest.
posted by mareli
on Dec 20, 2010 -
116 comments
The old lady always called me her boy... and she kept me in her room from the time that I was born until her death, then willed me to her son Samuel. When she was dying she called me to her bedside... Taking my hand in hers she told me to be a good boy and stay with Samuel. To Samuel she said, "Keep my boy as long as you live to remember me by." Larry Lapsley began life as someone else's property, but he managed to break free from his mistress' dying wish by way of a remarkable journey that would lead him to becoming the first black homesteader in Saline County, Kansas:
When I came to Salina I was twenty-five years old and was without schooling. I had never gone to school a day in my life and I haven't any education yet but there is one thing I have, a good home and plenty of friends. [more inside]
posted by amyms
on Sep 18, 2010 -
22 comments
Many have pointed to the debilitating payments that Haiti had to make to France to compensate slave owners at the begining of the country's history as the key reason why it has been mired in poverty ever since - in stark contrast to it's neighbour the Domican Republic. Now there are calls for
France to repay $23 Billion via an
open letter. Of course, the US has had it's own
debate over this sensitive issue for a while now.
posted by helmutdog
on Aug 16, 2010 -
41 comments
In 1865, after the end of the Civil War, Col. P. H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, asking him to return to work for him. In reply,
Jourdon Anderson told Colonel Anderson exactly where he could stick his offer. This letter was part of The Freedmen's Book (
full download in many different formats) which was distributed to those freed after and during the Civil War, so that they would know stories of other freedmen who had done well, including Touissant L'Ouverture, Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass. The book was put together and published by Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist, women's rights activist, Indian rights campaigner and all around awesome person. She became famous in her own time for her cookbook
The Frugal Housewife, but today her best known work is Over the River and Through the Woods. The Freedmen's Book was part of an effort by abolitionists after the war to educate freed slaves. The American Antiquarian Society has a great website about that movement,
Northern Visions of Race, Region and Reform, which has plenty of
primary sources and images galore.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 22, 2010 -
92 comments
In "honor" of Confederate History Month,
The Atlantic blogger
Ta-Nehisi Coates presents
a contemporaneous indictment of the American institution of slavery in the form of a fund-raising letter for the education of freed slaves. The content is presented without editorial in the original post, but there is a very interesting discussion of related issues in the comments section below.
(via)
posted by The Confessor
on Apr 15, 2010 -
26 comments
"If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away."
Audio recordings from interviews with former slaves, conducted by WPA folklorists and others, including the Lomaxes and Zora Neale Hurston. Only these
twenty-six audio recordings of people formerly enslaved in the antebellum American South have ever been found.
posted by Miko
on Feb 7, 2010 -
16 comments
The Price of Sex: Women Speak Since the collapse of communism in 1989, millions of former Soviet bloc residents have migrated abroad, looking for opportunities. These waves of migration breathed life into one of the oldest yet darkest criminal enterprises--the trafficking of human beings into sexual slavery. Hundreds of thousands of Eastern European women have been sold into prostitution. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova, a Bulgarian who immigrated to the United States in 1990, has documented their journeys from villages in Moldova to the streets of Turkey and nightclubs in Dubai--where prostitution is an equation of supply, demand and desperation.
posted by autoclavicle
on Nov 4, 2009 -
70 comments
The Uprising Of The Ants: "Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik from Ludwig Maximillians Universty in Munich found that some of the kidnapped workers don't bow to the whims of their new queen. Once they have matured, they start killing the pupae of their captors, destroying as many as two-thirds of the colony's brood. "
posted by The Whelk
on Apr 2, 2009 -
32 comments
"The Beydanes, also known as
White Moors, are the ruling caste in Mauritania. They are Arab Berber tribesmen whose ancestors established control in the seventeenth century. The Haratin, also known as
Black Moors, are the descendants of black West Africans conquered and enslaved by the Beydanes centuries ago." from the New Yorker story,
A Slave in New York, about a former slave who escaped in 1978, came to live in America and now works with the
American Anti-Slavery Group.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Feb 6, 2009 -
25 comments
Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old.
Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address.
While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jan 19, 2009 -
30 comments
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documents the slave trade from Africa to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries.
It provides searchable information on almost 35,000 trans-Atlantic voyages hauling human cargo, as well as
maps,
images and
data on some individual Africans transported." Search for
people. Search for
voyages.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Dec 19, 2008 -
18 comments
