It may be April Fool’s Day, but none of the following links are jokes (despite the rich tradition of tricksters in the African diaspora)! As always, our editorial team encourages you to pass this post along to friends, students, colleagues, etc.; as always, a link here does not necessarily mean agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.
- Dylan Gaffney, “Addressing Underrepresentation in Rural New England Community Archives: Documenting the History of Black Lives in Rural New England,” Internet Archive Blogs (March 20, 2024): LINK. “We know too little about Black lives in rural and small-town New England, and the places Black residents were able to carve out for themselves in these communities. … [The Documenting Early Black Lives in the Connecticut River Valley project was designed] to uncover names, details of their lives, and some sense of how people of color survived in [this region] before and after the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783.”
- Diana Yates, “Can genetic genealogy restore family narratives disrupted by the transatlantic slave trade?” University of Illinois News Bureau (March 28, 2024): LINK. Anthropologist LaKisha David describes new efforts to understand the legacies of American slavery through genetic genealogy, a combination of DNA testing and traditional family history research.
- Aallyah Wright, “A Florida Community Faces Erasure. Residents Are Honoring Its History.” Capital B News (March 21, 2024): LINK. A Florida community founded by freed people in 1870 is endangered as developers and industrialists encourage Black residents—many the direct descendants of original landowners—to sell their land. Activists and community members in Royal, FL, are fighting for the town’s legacy.
- Jamie Stengle, “85 years after a racist mob drove Opal Lee’s family away, she’s getting a new home on the same spot,” AP News (March 23, 2024): LINK. “When Opal Lee was 12, a racist mob drove her family out of their Texas home. Now, the 97-year-old community activist is getting closer to moving into a brand new home on the very same tree-lined corner lot in Fort Worth.” (Lee was a leader figure in the movement to make Juneteenth a national holiday.)
- Marlee Bunch, “Why civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer was ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired,’” The Conversation (March 27, 2024): LINK. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) was brutally beaten by racists, fought to register Black voters, and pushed LBJ and the Democrat party to recognize the basic rights of African Americans. Today her memory is an important reminder of the long legacy of voter suppression.
- Allison Wiltz, “Black Veterans Denied of Benefits of GI Bill Because of Their Race,” Medium (March 24, 2024): LINK (a free Medium account is required). The author draws a straight line from broken promises to Black veterans since the Civil War and the racial wealth gap today: “While the GI Bill [after World War II] promised veterans funds for education, government backing for loans, unemployment allowances, and job funding assistance, racial segregation and discrimination cut these promises short.”
- Juan Peña, “Boston: Activists demand $15 billion from ‘white churches’ to fund reparations for black community,” Voz Media (March 26, 2024): LINK. A group of interfaith Christian clergy in Boston called upon the city’s “white churches” to support reparations for the transatlantic slave trade through direct investment in Boston’s Black communities. This would be separate from a municipal task force that is already considering a $15 billion reparations fund.
- Filip Timotija, “UN chief calls for slavery reparations,” The Hill (March 27, 2024): LINK. While marking the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade on March 25, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for an international framework for reparations: “Descendants of enslaved Africans and people of African descent are still fighting for equal rights and freedoms around the world.”
- Adam Mahoney, “The Port of Baltimore Tore This Community Apart Long Before the Key Bridge Collapse,” Capital B News (March 27, 2024): LINK. Turner Station, a post-industrial historic Black neighborhood in Baltimore, is reckoning with the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Activists and community members are concerned about hazardous chemical shipments that will be rerouted through their residential neighborhood—an area that has suffered environmental racism many times before.
- Aallyah Wright, “The Legacy of Black Cowgirls,” Capital B News (March 27, 2024): LINK. In all the excitement surrounding Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter, it’s easy to forget about the real Black cowboys and cowgirls who have been part of a rodeo tradition that goes back many generations. But according to some observers, “Beyoncé is reclaiming what Black Americans created, the American flag falls under that as well. We built this country off our backs. She’s taking the reins & makin’ a statement. She’s redefining our history.”
- Alice Randall, “How Beyoncé Fits Into the Storied Legacy of Black Country,” Time (March 28, 2024): LINK. Randall is the author of My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future (2024). Back in 1983, she started a quest to find the “First Family of Black Country.” Now she argues that Beyoncé has raised an important question with Cowboy Carter: “If country owes a significant debt to Black culture, what in America doesn’t?”