Construction workers extracted a Calhoun statue in Charleston, South Carolina on June 24, 2020.
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Despite his defense of slavery, the former vice president and US senator from South Carolina has been honored with statues and streets, schools and counties. That’s finally changing.
A vigil in protest against an execution in Virginia in 2009.
Michael Reynolds/EPA
The racist legacy of the American death penalty.
The view from the dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle.
Alana Dillette
It is a good time to ask how the travel and tourism industry has contributed to racism and how that can change.
Pub owner Greene King’s founder was connected to slavery.
Companies may have a moral obligation to make amends, but slavery victims won’t find it easy to argue they have a legal right to reparations.
The Greenwood section of Tulsa, Okla., is seen in flames during in 1921 during one of the worst acts of anti-Black racism in American history.
(Creative Commons)
History will cast a long shadow over Donald Trump’s first campaign rally since the pandemic began.
Former slaves harvesting for their own profit.
Corbis via Getty Images
Black farmers own far less land than they did in 1910 and the racial gap in homeownership is at the highest level for 50 years.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II speaks outside of the St. John’s Episcopal Church Lafayette Square on June 14, 2020.
Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
From the earliest days of the anti-slavery movement, Black religious leaders have infused the fight for civil rights with spirituality.
Lorne sugar plantation in Mackay, 1874.
State Library Queensland
As the American Civil War interrupted cotton production, plantation owners looked to the new colony of Queensland.
Women in front of YWCA’s Ontario House, 698 Ontario Street, ca. 1912
Library Archives Canada/flickr
Reparations to African Canadians for enslavement and historical injustices need not be financial payments to every individual African Canadian. Instead funds for specific groups are a viable option.
In 1891 a ‘Slave Map of Modern Australia’ was printed in the British Anti-Slavery Reporter.
Author provided
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s statement that ‘there was no slavery in Australia’ is at odds with the historical record.
The statue of slave trader Robert Milligan was removed from outside the London Docklands Musuem.
Emma Tarrant/Shutterstock
Statues and monuments have been used to present a revisionist history in which empire was great while omitting the violence they subvertly celebrate.
Revered no more: the statue of Bristol slave-trader Edward Colston is torn down.
Ben Birchall/PA Wire/PA Images
The statue was part of a push in the Victorian era to create mercantile heroes. Colston’s slaving activities were conveniently glossed over.
Protesters throw statue of Edward Colston into Bristol harbour.
PA/Ben Birchall
After years of inaction by authorities, protesters have forced the point – opening a new chapter in this monument’s history.
Ladijane Sofia da Concecão, one of millions of unemployed housekeepers in Brazil, accepts a food donation from a friend in São Paulo, May 7, 2020.
Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images
Maids were among Brazil’s earliest COVID-19 victims, infected by employers who had been to Italy. Now 39% of Brazilian ‘domésticas’ have been let go, most without severance or sick leave.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer has sparked widespread outrage.
John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Half a century after the federal government voided Jim Crow laws, the criminal justice system still discriminates against African Americans.
Gregory and Travis McMichael who killed Ahmaud Arbery during an attempted citizen’s arrest.
Glynn County Detention Center via AP
Laws enabling citizens to apprehend suspects, which date back to medieval England, were historically used in the US to suppress slave revolts.
Ahmaud Arbery’s best friend, right, and his sister speak at a memorial event for Arbery on May 9, 2020.
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
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.
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A group of leading black, queer and feminist academics held a colloquium to reconsider a seminal blackness studies text – offering new ways of thinking about the decolonial project.
Harriet Jacobs, writer of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Wikimedia
The problems and ideologies that define American culture were formed in the 19th century.
A 1620 engraving depicts tobacco being prepared for export from Jamestown, Virginia.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
During two 17th-century medical calamities, economic imperatives outweighed moral concerns.