Once owned by James Madison, the Montpelier plantation remains a model for presenting a full depiction of the life of the former president as well as the lives of those he enslaved.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on US slavery
Displaying 21 - 40 of 40 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.
Plantation museums could be ideal venues for students to learn about the nation’s history of race-based slavery, but only if they stop whitewashing the horrors of what took place on their grounds.
The 13th Amendment is given credit for freeing an estimated 4 million enslaved people during the Civil War era. It also enabled a prison system of free labor and involuntary servitude.
Sugar has deep links with slavery in the US, but Black workers weren’t the only ones affected. In post-Civil War Louisiana, Chinese workers also toiled cutting and processing cane.
Before the Civil War, US activists sought to combat slavery through sugar boycotts. Instead, consumption grew.
The romanticized notions of Southern gentility are increasingly at odds with historical reality as the lives, culture and contributions of the enslaved are becoming integral on tours of plantations.
James McCune Smith was the first African American to receive a medical doctorate from a university. He dedicated his life to fighting injustice.
Few people embody the contradictions of U.S. history like the author of the Star Spangled Banner, someone who denounced slavery as a moral wrong but rejected racial equality.
Few issues are as difficult to deal with in the classroom as slavery in the US. Here, a professor who trains teachers on how to present the topic offers some insights.
At once tender and horrific, The Underground Railroad’s use of visuals and sound beautifully portray the reality of slavery and its legacy in the US today.
The biblical story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt is also a historical tale of reparations after enslavement.
Even Colonial-era abolitionists like Alexander Hamilton enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built from slavery.
Former enslaved persons never got ‘forty acres and a mule,’ and their descendants have been denied reparations for the legacy of slavery. Will Joe Biden be the president to change that?
Cameras played a critical role in the quest for social equality for Black Americans in the post-slavery era.
History is full of examples of nations paying out to compensate for slavery. But the money never went to those who suffered under the system, only those who profited.
The myth has become a symbol of the traumatizing legacy of trans-Atlantic slavery. It also serves as a form of resistance and healing.
The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.
Since its creation, the infamous diagonal blue cross with white stars on a red background has been a symbol of white resistance to giving Black Americans more political power.
A tale of vampirism would have been shocking to readers at the time if was published, not because of its monsters, but its politics.
Top contributors
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Professor of Practice in Education, Clark University
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Professor of History, Tufts University
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Associate Professor of Geography, Georgia Southern University
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Professor of History, Binghamton University, State University of New York
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Professor of History, Arizona State University
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Professor of History, Brandeis University
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Derek H. Alderman is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee
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Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of Connecticut
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Associate professor emeritus, Journalism, Virginia Commonwealth University
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Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
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Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History, Dartmouth College
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Professor and Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science, Durham University
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Assistant Professor of Geography, Columbus State University
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Assistant Professor of History, Georgia Southern University
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Professor of Political Science, Texas Tech University
