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Articles on Racial violence

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Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, right, beat James Jeffries in 1910, sparking racial violence. George Haley, San Francisco Call, via University of California, Riverside, via Library of Congress

When a Black boxing champion beat the ‘Great White Hope,’ all hell broke loose

Johnson’s victory, in the manliest of sports, contradicted claims of racial supremacy by whites and demonstrated that Blacks were no longer willing to acquiesce to white dominance.
An early 20th-century NAACP map showing lynchings between 1909 and 1918. The maps were sent to politicians and newspapers in an effort to spur legislation protecting Black Americans. Library of Congress

How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America

Mapping is one way African Americans fight for equality and help each other navigate a racially hostile landscape.
Militia members associated with the Three Percenters movement conducting a military drill in Flovilla, Ga., in 2016, days after Trump’s election. After his 2020 defeat, Three Percenters were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Image

Police, soldiers bring lethal skill to militia campaigns against US government

A leaked database shows at least 10% of the far-right Oath Keepers militia is active police or military – people professionally trained in using weapons and conducting sophisticated operations.
Ahmaud Arbery’s best friend, right, and his sister speak at a memorial event for Arbery on May 9, 2020. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Why cellphone videos of Black people’s deaths should be considered sacred, like lynching photographs

The US has a centuries-old tradition of killing black people without repercussion – and of publicly viewing the violence. Spreading those images can disrespect the dead and traumatize viewers.
National Memorial for Peace and Justice. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

Lynching memorial shows women were victims, too

Although fewer black women were lynched in the US than men, their stories have been marginalized. Will a new memorial in Alabama help make their sacrifices known?
Outside the courthouse in Charleston, South Carolina. Grace Beahm/The Post and Courier via AP

Dylann Roof, Michael Slager on trial: Five essential reads on Charleston

Two major trials in the killings of black victims in South Carolina start this week. Learn about the state’s past and present struggle with racial violence in this roundup.
Online and offline activism are merging, as recognised by this protest against the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Twitter

How apps and other online tools are challenging racist attacks

Racial abuse and violence and the intertwining of ‘offline’ and ‘online’ worlds call for new methods for opposing racism in public.
The cultural context in which class, ethnic and racial tensions explode into open violence must be analysed honestly. AAP Image/Paul Miller

Friday essay: a response to the Cronulla riots, ten years on

Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Was Cronulla any different?
Many of today’s campus troubles have their roots in a racial past of American universities Book image via www.shutterstock.com

Shades of segregated past in today’s campus troubles

At the root of today’s racial troubles on campuses is the past, when most American universities were intimately connected to slave trade and slavery. Harvard, Princeton, Brown were no exception.

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