Happy New Year! We’re back from our holiday hiatus to bring you a few weeks’ worth of links about the legacies of American slavery. As always, we encourage you to share this post, though a link here does not imply full agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.
- Rona Kobell, “A Rebellion Reappraised,” National Parks Conservation Association (Winter 2024): LINK. At Virgin Islands National Park, a new plaque will commemorate an oft overlooked 1734 revolt that nearly succeeding in upending St. John’s slaveholding establishment. News of this Caribbean uprising traveled quickly to enslavers (and some of the enslaved) in what would become the United States.
- Anita B. Stone, “Centers stand in tribute to Rosenwald-Washington partnership,” Midtown Magazine (December 31, 2023): LINK. A partnership between Chicago businessman Julius Rosenwald and educator Booker T. Washington that began in 1911 resulted in the “Rosenwald schools,” a network of elementary schools designed to improve the education (and the lives) of Black Americans across the South.
- James Walvin, “How a Slave Trader’s Hymn Became a Global Anthem,” Counterpunch (December 29, 2023): LINK. A new book about John Newton, the former slave trader who wrote the great hymn “Amazing Grace” (which the author describes as “a global anthem for humankind”).
- Donna Bryson, “How history, race and politics divide Tennessee on gun legislation,” Reuters (December 28, 2023): LINK. Informed by their understanding of Black activist history, politicians (both Black and white) and the communities they represent are trying to bring gun control measures to Tennessee towards adopting gun control measures in the wake of a school shooting in Memphis.
- Mary Mobley, “Virginia seminary marks 200th anniversary by scrubbing names linked to slavery,” The College Fix (December 28, 2023): LINK. Virginia Theological Seminary has joined the ranks of Christian institutions of higher education—including CIC member Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois)—that are confronting campus histories of slavery and racism. On this campus, six buildings will be renamed.
- Kevin Dauray, “Slavery’s Connection to DC High School Explored in Traveling Exhibit,” The Zebra (December 27, 2023): LINK. After learning about Georgetown University’s efforts to study and repair an institutional history of enslavement, students at a nearby Catholic high school began to explore the legacies of slavery at their own institution. One result is a traveling exhibit at Alexandria, Virginia’s Freedom House Museum (which is housed in the former building of a notorious antebellum slave trader).
- Sharon Johnson, “Descendants fight to maintain historic Black communities. Keeping their legacy alive is complicated,” AP News (December 21, 2023): LINK. As historic Black towns and communities become increasingly vulnerable to redevelopment, some descendants across the nation are fighting to save their land, educate stakeholders, and restore homeownership—but they face an uphill battle.
- Rayna Reid Rayford, “This Company is Polluting a Predominantly Black Town with Pig Manure. And the Government is Making It Easier for Them to Do It,” Essence (December 20, 2023): LINK. Black residents and their allies are historicizing a fight to save their community from environmental injustice by juxtaposing a map of eastern North Carolina’s historic slave population with a modern corporation’s industrial hog operations.
- George Candy, “New bill signed to create commission for slavery reparations in NY,” Rochester First (December 19, 2023): LINK. In a recent press conference, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a committee to present “a viable path forward to helping the descendants of New York slaves and addressing the harms and disparities that exist in education…healthcare…[and] in the environment.”
- Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, “Joel Roberts Poinsett: Namesake of the poinsettia, enslaver, secret agent and perpetrator of the ‘Trail of Tears,'” The Conversation (December 19, 2023): LINK. Pointsett’s complex past—as a politician, financial investor, enslaver, Secretary of War, secret agent, and founder of an organization that later became part of the Smithsonian Institution—is thoughtfully re-considered. In light of the recent decision to rename bird species, it is possible that the poinsettia may be one of the first flowers to be renamed.
- Ansley Quiros and Allie R. Lopez, “The Quest for Racial Equality Has Always Been Different for Rural Americans,” Time (December 17, 2023): LINK. Continuing a tradition of Black dispossession, an elderly African American woman homeowner is at risk of losing her home to a construction company. The case is working its way to the Alabama Supreme Court.
- Negar Fani and Nathaniel Garnett, “Racism produces subtle brain changes that lead to increased disease risk in Black populations,” The Conversation (December 15, 2023): LINK. In a new study, researchers have found that racial discrimination increases the activity of the prefrontal cortex “because responding to these types of affronts requires high-effort coping strategies, such as suppressing emotions.” Coping has a clear somatic cost.
A CIC Member Resource We Missed:
- Catherine Halley, “Tuskegee University’s Audio Collections,” JSTOR (October 5, 2023): LINK. “Tuskegee University Archives recently released new recordings from the Tuskegee Civic Association records that feature prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. These speeches address the Tuskegee community by civil rights leaders like John Lewis and Coretta Scott King, fill in historical gaps to illuminate the relationships between leaders and their constituents. The collection was digitized from reel-to-reel tape under the care of university archivist Dana Chandler and made available through funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Council of Independent Colleges.”