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- William Logan, “Among the missing, among the dead: black poetry in America,” The New Criterion (April 2024): LINK. The author discusses the poetry of W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and others—work that explored how African Americans grappled with Black life and the life of the nation. (April is National Poetry Month.)
- Andrew W. Kahrl, “It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes,” New York Times (April 11, 2024): LINK. The author argues that property taxes contribute to the widening economic gap between wealthy and poorer communities: “Black people have paid the heaviest cost. Since they began acquiring property after emancipation, African Americans have been overtaxed by local governments.”
- Caroline Gutman and Emily Cochrane, “Tracing Charleston’s History of Slavery, From a Burial Ground to a DNA Swab,” New York Times (April 11, 2024): LINK. In Charleston, South Carolina, a major port shaped by its active participation in the slave trade, researchers have extracted DNA from the remains of 36 enslaved people. The search continues for their living descendants.
- Rona Kobell, “Goucher College joins movement to reckon with its ties to slavery,” Baltimore Banner (April 9, 2024): LINK. CIC member Goucher College (Baltimore, MD) sits on what was once among the largest plantations in Maryland. Over the last eight years, the college (with help from the National Park Service) has been reckoning with this history and its responsibilities to the immediate community and the descendants of American slavery.
- Matthew Daly, “EPA says chemical plants must reduce emissions likely to cause cancer,” AP News (April 9, 2024): LINK. The Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled new rules to reduce toxic emissions likely to cause cancer, which will especially benefit majority-Black neighborhoods near New Orleans and up the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor (a.k.a. “Cancer Alley”).
- Theodore R. Johnson, “A Virginia city burdened by history seeks a better future,” The Washington Post (April 9, 2024): LINK. In Danville, Virginia, residents reckon with a heritage that includes a brief turn as the final capital of the Confederacy in 1865 and the violent response to a Civil Rights protest in 1963 (“Bloody Monday”).
- Caree Banton, Karynecia Conner, and Leah Grant, “Black Slavery, Native Nations, and the Path to Reconciliation,” KUAF (April 6, 2024): LINK. This podcast discusses Alaina Roberts’ recent book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), an exploration of Black freedom and Black–Native American relationships.
- Roger House, “Why Black Americans should honor the history of Liberia,” New York Amsterdam News (April 9, 2024): LINK. The author, who teaches at CIC member Emerson College (Boston, MA), argues that “[t]he history of Liberia should be honored as much as the independence holiday of Juneteenth.”
- Andrew Ifedapo Thompson, et al., “Anti-Black Political Violence and the Historical Legacy of the Great Replacement Conspiracy,” Perspectives on Politics (April 9, 2024): https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592724000045. From the abstract: “Racial violence is central to the American polity. We argue that support for violence, specifically anti-Black violence, has a long historical arc in American politics dating back to chattel slavery. In this paper, we argue that the racial violence associated with the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy is much more pervasive among the white American public because of the historical legacy of anti-Black violent sentiment.”
- John-John Williams IV, “Key Bridge name should change, civil rights groups say,” The Baltimore Banner (April 8, 2024): LINK. The Caucus of African American Leaders—an umbrella group that includes the NAACP, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and others—is calling on Maryland to pick a new name for the Francis Scott Key Bridge once it’s rebuilt. (Scott was an enslaver and a racist who happened to write the lyrics of the national anthem.)
- Laura E. Wallace, Stephanie L. Reeves, and Steven J. Spencer, “Celebrating organizational history triggers social identity threat among Black Americans,” Psychological and Cognitive Sciences (April 8, 2024): https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313878121. From the abstract: “Many mainstream organizations celebrate their historical successes. In their history, however, they often marginalized racial minorities, women, and other underrepresented groups. We suggest that when organizations celebrate their histories, even without mentioning historical marginalization, they can undermine belonging and intentions to join the organization among historically marginalized groups.”