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.
But first, a shameless plug: Are you concerned about the politicization of history teaching in this country, especially when it comes to issues of race? If so, here’s a small thing you can do — vote for the session we proposed for the next SXSW EDU conference on “Teaching Difficult Histories: Private Colleges & Public K-12.” Please take a look before August 18 (you need to create a free account to vote): panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/151238.
Race and Education:
- Benjamin Chrisinger, “Shortage of Black doctors is rooted in racist history — a $600M gift will help historically Black medical schools address the gap,” The Conversation (August 7, 2024): LINK. “Many contemporary scholars and activists are looking to the past in order to increase the public’s understanding of how race has played a historical role in the health outcomes of Black Americans.” An unprecedented gift by former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg to four historically Black medical schools aims to help solve significant gaps in health care by race.
- Phillip Warfield, “Will Andrews University Address the ‘Berrien’ Legacy?” Spectrum Magazine (August 6, 2024): LINK. Seventh-day Adventists grapple with the tension between their abolitionist origins and the location of their flagship college, Andrews University (a CIC member institution), in Berrien Springs, Michigan — a town that was named for an enslaver, a proto-secessionist, and a supporter of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.
- Randi B. Hagi, “Embattled legacies: Shenandoah County in the Civil War,” WMRA (August 6, 2024): LINK. “The Shenandoah County [Virginia] School Board made national news earlier this year when it voted to restore the names of Confederate generals to two schools…[Two reporters from the local public radio station] teamed up to delve deeper into the controversy and the history behind it.”
- Elizabeth M. Ross, “How Can Teachers Explain Slavery to Students?” Harvard Graduate School of Education (August 5, 2024): LINK. A week-long institute at Harvard on how to teach about the history and legacies of enslavement offers insights that can help teachers who are facing anti-DEI pressure. (Austin College in Texas is one of many CIC member institutions that work with K-12 teachers to strengthen teaching about slavery and race.)
Faces of Racial Violence:
- Trevor Hughes, et al., “Sonya Massey’s death: How race, police and mental health collided in America’s heartland,” USA Today (August 11, 2024): LINK. A team of reporters explores the contexts of Sonya Massey’s murder by a white police officer in Illinois: her family connection to the Springfield Race Riot of 1908; her faith in the Black Church; the police officer’s tumultuous personal and professional history; and the complicated legacies of race and justice in Massey’s neighborhood.
- Audra D. S. Burch, “Ferguson 10 Years Later: How Protests Gave Way to Politics and Policy,” New York Times (August 9, 2024): LINK. Reflecting on events in Ferguson, Missouri, where a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown Jr., in 2014, setting off an international wave of protests: “At a more grassroots level, [the shooting and ensuing protests] created a political incubator of emerging local leaders.” (Also see this conversation between Michael Brown’s father and an organizer of the Ferguson protests.)
- Nicole Maurantonio, “Decades on, Delbert Africa’s surrender still provides powerful image of US racism and Black victimhood,” The Conversation (August 8, 2024): LINK. In 1978, a standoff between the Philadelphia police and the controversial Black Power group MOVE left a police officer dead and 18 people wounded. The author argues that a famous photograph of the MOVE leader surrendering to police “can illuminate much about today’s ambivalence toward how to interpret visual evidence of Black victimhood.”
Creative Literature and the Legacies of Slavery:
- Zoë Hopkins, “Lessons on Black Art Writing From Toni Morrison,” Hyperallergic (August 4, 2024): LINK. Remembering Morrison’s contributions to (world, American, African American) literature five years after her death: “Morrison’s literature was animated by her burning desire to give Blackness wings, to chart its path of flight from the asphyxiating hold of the White imagination, to look at Blackness in the places where it stands in this freedom.”
- Vidya Krishnan, “Reading Baldwin in New Delhi,” The Emancipator (August 1, 2024): LINK. An Indian journalist reflects on James Baldwin’s legacy — especially how the moral clarity of his writing helped change her own understanding of the world: “His essays on civil rights weren’t simply a movement’s voice in one country. They were anti-colonial and anti-imperialist in their teachings — be it advocating for Palestinian rights or condemning the Vietnam war….” (See our recent blog post devoted to Baldwin’s centennial.)
Race and Place:
- Sara Ruberg, “Why White Supremacists Are Trying to Attack Energy Grids,” New York Times (August 8, 2024): LINK. “An ideology with roots in white supremacist writings in the 20th century found renewed attention in neo-Nazi online groups in the 2010s and has inspired recent plots [against domestic infrastructure].”
- Oscar Perry Abello, “Higher-Income Black and Hispanic Households Are Opting to Live in Low-Income Neighborhoods. Why?” Next City (July 31, 2024): LINK. Instead of asking a simpler question — why some wealthier Black and Hispanic households choose to stay in poorer neighborhoods — this analysis starts with an alternative question: “Why isn’t there more investment tapping into the true economic potential of Black or Hispanic neighborhoods?”
Enjoyed this week’s links? Check out the guest post from our friends at Goucher College that we published last week!