Instead of using the secret routes along the Underground Railroad to find freedom in the North, thousands of enslaved Black people fled to free Black communities in Southern slaveholding states.
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Articles on Frederick Douglass
Displaying 1 - 20 of 21 articles
Harriet Tubman has long been known as a conductor on the Underground Railroad leading enslaved Black people to freedom. Less known is her role as a Union spy during the Civil War.
The evidence is growing that experiencing both systemic and everyday race-based discrimination may lead some Black Americans to become depressed and think about suicide.
Escaping slavery did not result in unconditional freedom.
James McCune Smith was the first African American to receive a medical doctorate from a university. He dedicated his life to fighting injustice.
Cameras played a critical role in the quest for social equality for Black Americans in the post-slavery era.
President Lincoln was a statesman. John Brown was a radical. That’s the traditional view of how each one fought slavery, but it fails to capture the full measure of their devotion.
The abolitionist’s legacy is often molded to fit various political agendas. Yet the Brown who appears in Showtime’s new miniseries is one we haven’t seen before.
When African Americans press ‘record’ to film police brutality, they are challenging a nation not to look away.
On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, women’s historic struggles to vote continue to resonate as the country debates who should vote and how.
Here is a small list of pivotal texts by African American women from the past century.
Two men were convicted in 1859 of violating the Fugitive Slave Act. They had rescued a runaway slave from slave hunters in Ohio, one of the small acts of resistance that led to the Civil War.
Americans have debated what it means to be Christian in politics throughout their history. Those debates continue today.
The lead villain of Black Panther is a complex character who represents years of conflicting debates among African American leaders about how to achieve Black liberation.
It’s 200 years since the legendary African American abolitionist and ex-slave Frederick Douglass crossed the Atlantic and found freedom in northeast England.
It was aboard a steamship that Mark Twain first laid eyes on a photograph of Olivia Langdon, known as Livy. It was love at first sight. In their marriage of 34 years, they remained deeply devoted.
Psalm 137 – best known for its opening line, ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’ – is a 2,500-year-old Hebrew psalm that deals with the Jewish exile and is remembered each year on Tisha B’av.
In the 19th century, slaveholders advertised widely for runaway slaves and often hired men to track and capture fugitives. African-American communities offered sanctuary space to the runaways.
In the 19th century, critics and audiences thought blacks were incapable of singing as well as their white, European counterparts. Greenfield forced them to reconcile their ears with their racism.
Many groups have been labeled ‘enemy’ in the American past. A literary scholar looks at the role literature and philosophy have played in dispelling fears and shifting public attitudes.
Top contributors
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Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University
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Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
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Professor in American Studies, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts Dean, Honors College, UMass Boston
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Assistant Teaching Professor of Music, Penn State
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Williams Memorial Professor of Law, Northwestern University
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Professor of History, UMass Amherst
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Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State University
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Associate Professor, African History, University of Guelph
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Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies, Claremont Graduate University
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Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Feminisms and Gender-Based Violence, University of Manitoba
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Professor and Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science, Durham University
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Former Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State University
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Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center, Iowa State University
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Assistant Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
