This illustration of Little Eva and Uncle Tom by Hammatt Billings appears in the first edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’
(Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive)
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ the best seller of the 19th century, is not a relic from the past. The complex Uncle Tom figure still has a hold over Black politics.
Fists raised in solidarity for George Floyd in Charlotte, N.C.
(Unsplash/Clay Banks)
In a sermon two weeks after MLK’s funeral, civil rights leader, Wyatt Tee Walker, urged young seminarians to be hopeful and take action for making change happen. His sermon has valuable lessons today.
Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future.
Marvel Studios
Canada’s pioneering Black athletes may be unknown to many, but their efforts paved the way for others who went on to perform at the highest levels.
John Marrion depicted here was part of the 104th (New Brunswick) Regiment of Foot. The 104th soldiers once snowshoed over a thousand kilometres in about fifty days during the War of 1812.
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art/Canadian War Museum/CWM 19810948-008 (NO REUSE)
The Canadian soldiers who took part in one of the biggest feats of the War of 1812 included Black soldiers of the 104th New Brunswick Regiment of Foot.
Josh Gibson slides into home during the 1944 Negro Leagues All-Star Game.
Bettmann/Getty Images
While segregation was a shameful period in baseball history, the Negro Leagues were a resounding success and an immense source of pride for black America.
A studio group portrait of the Fisk University Jubilee singers.
James Wallace Black/American Missionary Association
Spirituals were created out of the experience of enslaved people in the US. They weren’t songs of anger – but of an abiding belief in the victory of good over evil.
African American Vernacular English is part and parcel of Black identity. Its distinctive linguistic features are
denigrated — wrongly.
(Shutterstock)
Many historians and other scholars say what Americans have traditionally learned about the complex period that followed the Civil War falls short of what we should know.
The Collective of Black Artists (COBA) has been supporting African and Caribbean dance in Canada for 25 years.
COBA/Yosseif Haddad
Thanks to a long history of exclusionary government programs, the typical black family now has only 10 cents for every dollar held by the typical white family.
Rosemary Brown, then a member of the B.C. legislature, speaks at a protest against pornography in downtown Vancouver in 1984.
(CP PHOTO/ Chuck Stoody)
Do Canadians like their activism to be communicated in the safest and blandest manner possible?
Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen are on this short list of enduring must-read writers.
Left to right: Nobel Prize, U.S. Library of Congress, Yale archive
Here is a small list of pivotal texts by African American women from the past century.
The historical depiction of ‘the mammy’ is a racist stereotype, with an enduring impact. Hattie McDaniel (right) won an Oscar for her role in ‘Gone with the Wind’ with Vivien Leigh (left).
Selznick International Pictures
The first NAACP meeting was held in Canada but there is no mention of Black Canadians in the books. This historical absence is a symbol of the invisibility of anti-Black racism in Canada.