“The title of Benedict J. Fernandez’s photograph could have doubled as an entry on the society pages of a Black newspaper or magazine: Dr. King enjoys lunch with his family after church in Atlanta. African American publications often reported on the luncheons, bridal showers, and parties of the Black elite.”
Read More“A group of Georgetown University students in 2019 began wearing buttons that read For Elizabeth, or For Isaac, or For any array of other names. These adornments could have been mistaken for student government campaign buttons. But instead they pointed to a pivotal moment in Georgetown’s history: these were the names on the inventory of a bill of sale from 1838.”
Read More“Each January, scholars and activists alike prepare to refute superficial and simplistic tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. The widespread celebration of the King holiday—from churches to schools to corporations—makes this difficult. King's legacy is invoked to promote empty multiculturalism and facile ideas of change, and it reflects erasures in civil rights history. Historian Michael K. Honey rights some of these wrongs in To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice. With clear writing and a thoughtful voice, Honey guides readers through pivotal movements of King's life by foregrounding his tense and symbiotic relationships with the labor movement. Honey adds texture to King's journey from being a descendant of people who ‘experienced deep poverty in the countryside’ to the supporter of striking sanitation workers in Memphis the day before his assassination (p. 22). Honey emphasizes that King's path was sometimes cleared, and sometimes muddied, by an interracial, but not always harmoniously integrated, labor movement.”
Read More“Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) may have poked a sleeping bear recently when he vowed to go to war to protect Chick-fil-A from a group of Notre Dame students and faculty who oppose a planned restaurant on campus. Graham’s comments were the latest chapter in the political jousting over the chicken chain’s conservative politics and religiosity.
But what many don’t know is that Chick-fil-A is far from atypical in fast food. Many chains have roots in two pillars of 20th-century conservatism: Christianity and free markets.”
Read More“Terrance Roberts shot and injured Hasan Jones in 2013. There is no question about that. What made this shooting fascinating to people in Denver was the question of which Terrance Roberts shot Jones. Roberts had risen to prominence locally and nationally as a peace activist, after years in the Bloods gang and serving a decade in prison on several felony convictions. Roberts’s anti-gang effort, known as the Colorado Camo Movement because of its members’ camouflage gear, unfolded in the very section of Denver he used to run. Had Roberts, the founder of a youth mentoring organization, acted in self-defense against Jones, a gang member? Or did ShowBizz — Roberts’s gang moniker — appear that day because, in fact, Roberts had never really changed?”
Read More“In the summer of 1967, Ebony magazine readers were offered a rare and deeply personal look into the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The esteemed leader had dispensed with his suits and ties—the standard uniform for mass meetings and court appearances. An elegant photo spread captured King in swim trunks, pajamas and slippers. King was at rest. Surrounded by the natural beauty of Ochos Rios, Jamaica, and unknowingly in the penultimate winter of his life, King’s time away from his multiple responsibilities to the freedom movement revealed an intimate portrait of a leader in transformation.”
Read More“As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor shows in Race for Profit, we are also only beginning to reckon with the complex network of bankers, real estate agents, and federal agencies that used the rhetoric of equality to obscure a set of race-to-the-bottom schemes that sought to extract as much wealth as possible from poor Black Americans.”
Read More“With Biden as the nominee and the general election campaign underway, there may be an impulse to forget what is now behind us, in the interest of simply dealing with what is in front. Yet the time is always right to consider how the party can move beyond rhetorical commitments to diversity. Competing against a Republican Party that has pandered to white nationalists requires a serious reckoning with the unfinished business of process and policy.”
Read MoreMcDonald’s has profited handily from its Black customers, while its presence in Black communities has led to a vexing set of circumstances for Black wealth and health.
Read MoreStudents do the hard work of rectifying racism in the academy. Administrators take the credit.
Read MoreAmericans have long pinned economic hopes on fast-food chains. And where there are hopes, there are scams.
Read MoreFrom civil rights to Ferguson, Franchise reveals the untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America.
Read MorePopeyes has long cultivated a black customer base — which has positive and negative ramifications.
Read More“Five years after Ferguson, BLM remains a potent political and social force. Its power rests on the organizing principles that grounded it: a radical, intersectional critique of racism; locally based organizing that respects the autonomy of its affiliates; and multi-modal activism that does not restrain the definition of politics.”
Read MoreWell-meaning liberals have long failed to recognize their own role in systems of oppression.
Read More“In Whitman’s description of the flight and rest of a fugitive, we are reminded of the sheer brutality of slavery, as well as the radical possibility of humanity in the face of immorality.”
Read More“The first thing I learned at college was that as a black student I had ruined college for everyone else. Among my cohort of about 3,500 at the University of Missouri at Columbia in the fall of 1997, black students numbered fewer than 300. We were outliers, and to many of our nonblack classmates, we were the undeserving throngs.”
Read More“Whether or not you know it, you have likely seen Gloria Richardson Dandridge before. You have seen the famous photo of her in protest, standing tall while pushing a gun out of her face. You have seen her give a look of disgust more devastating than any blow. You have seen her resolve, and her fearlessness. And whether or not you knew who she was or where she was, you undoubtedly knew at least one thing: This is a woman who knows how to stand in her power.”
Read MoreWhen the word "innovation" gets used on my campus, I often notice panic spreading across my colleagues’ faces. The thought of chalkboards being dismantled and replaced with complicated, high-tech smartboards and screens can terrify some of them. I admit that the thought of a flipped classroom turns me a bit upside down.
But my ideas about what innovation looks like have changed since I started team-teaching a course created to help first-generation students adjust to Georgetown University. Sometimes innovation requires no power cords or wireless network upgrades; rather, it requires the hard task of acknowledging how inequality has shaped and continues to shape our students’ lives, and doing something about it.
Read this article here.
Read MoreMy book explores the lives of girls and young women who made the harrowing journey from the cotton fields of the Deep South to the dizzying streets of Chicago’s Loop. I chronicle their ups and down in the midst of a momentous period in African American history.
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