This past weekend, we reflected on the legacies of the three students who lost their lives working to secure voting rights for African Americans in Mississippi 60 years ago. As always, we invite you to share this post with students, colleagues, and anyone else who is interested in the legacies of slavery. A link here does not imply agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.
- Susan Levine, “In 1964, the Klan killed three young activists and shocked the nation,” The Washington Post (June 20, 2024): LINK. 60 years after the Ku Klux Klan murdered three Freedom Summer activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Black and white residents alike consider their community’s legacy of brutal racism.
- Alexia Fernández Campbell, April Simpson, and Pratheek Rebala, “40 Acres and a Lie,” Mother Jones (July-August 2024): LINK. In a new project, a team at Mother Jones has compiled Reconstruction-era documents to identify 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans given land–only to have it returned to their enslavers.
- Linda J. Bilmes, Cornell William Brooks, “Paying reparations for slavery is possible — based on a study of federal compensation to farmers, fishermen, coal miners, radiation victims and 70 other groups,” The Conversation (June 19, 2024): LINK. New research published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal analyzed hundreds of cases and dozens of programs where the federal government paid “reparatory compensation” to millions of Americans.
- Elizabeth Cobbs, “How the Identity of the Only Black Woman to Serve in the U.S. Army in World War I Was Just Discovered,” TIME (June 19, 2024): LINK. Renee Messelin, the only Black woman to serve in the U.S. Army during World War I, hid her identity to join the first unit of American women soldiers. Despite facing racial discrimination, she made significant contributions as a skilled telephone operator during the war.
- Jeanne Theoharis, “The Boston ‘busing crisis’ was never about busing,” The Emancipator (June 19, 2024): LINK. It is well documented that Boston strongly opposed school desegregation in the 1970s, however, the author argues that it is part of a larger conversation: “[White Bostonians] did want to continue to differentiate their resistance from Southern segregationists. Framing it as Boston’s busing crisis helps render Northern school desegregation…as foolhardy, disruptive and, ultimately, unnecessary.”
- Leoneda Inge, “Reenvisioning land at the site of a former North Carolina plantation,” WUNC (June 19, 2024): LINK. Two African American women, Delphine Sellars and Lucille Patterson, have planted 45 raised garden beds at a site of a former plantation in what is now called “Historic Stagville” near Durham, North Carolina.
- Mark McCormick, “‘Lost cause’ of our nation’s brutal racism permeates society, distorting history along the way,” Kansas Reflector (June 18, 2024): LINK. Reflecting on the Lost Cause’s continuing impact, the author writes that people have been convinced that “the Confederacy wasn’t racist. That the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who defecated in the Capital [sic] are political prisoners. On this 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer, it seems that everything old is new again.”
- Sandra Susan Smith, “Boston continues to fail to earn the Black community’s trust,” The Boston Globe (June 17, 2024): LINK. “Boston Mayor Michelle Wu issued a formal apology for past racism towards the Black community. Despite apologies, racial disparities and trauma persist among Black Bostonians due to police harassment. Current policies continue to fuel distrust and trauma, hindering progress towards earning the Black community’s trust.”
- Tiya Miles, “How a Young Harriet Tubman Found Solace in Syncretic Religion,” Literary Hub (June 18, 2024): LINK. In an excerpt from her latest book, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press, 2024), Tiya Miles discusses how childhood trauma led enslaved girls like Minty Ross–Harriet Tubman–and other women to turn to faith for solace in the face of separation and abuse.
- Margot Brown, “How Black History and Environmental Justice Shape an Equitable Future,” Word in Black (June 17, 2024): LINK. Ever since a Black community in North Carolina protested the development of a hazardous waste landfill in their community in 1982, the environmental justice movement has worked to push conversations surrounding the advancement of environmental justice into the Academy and federal policies.
- Jesus Jiménez, “Chicago Mayor Orders Task Force on Reparations for Black Residents,” The New York Times (June 17, 2024): LINK. The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, signed an executive order to establish a task force that will study Chicago laws and policies from slavery to present, echoing Evanston, a Chicago suburb, who began planning how to distribute $10 million to Black residents through housing grants in 2021.