We look forward to seeing you at the Legacies conference in Memphis this week, either in person or virtually (there’s still time to register for the live streams)! 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.
Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement:
- Dylan C. Penningroth, “The Hidden Story of Black History and Black Lives Before the Civil Rights Movement,” Literary Hub (September 13, 2024): LINK. Legal historian Penningroth’s new book, Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (Norton, 2023), explores the often-overlooked history of Black civil rights before the Civil Rights Movement, highlighting the lives of ordinary African Americans engaged with the law.
- Jemar Tisby, “How do you keep going when it looks like you’re not winning?” The Emancipator (September 11, 2024): LINK. As the U.S. continues to struggle with the unfulfilled promises of racial justice since 2020, the author (a prominent Christian scholar) explores the legacies of freedom fighters like Myrlie Evers-Williams, a civil rights icon who demonstrated the resilience necessary to persevere.
- Rachel Petroziello, “The Author’s Corner with Hettie V. Williams: The Georgia of the North,” Current (September 9, 2024): LINK. Williams discusses her new book, The Georgia of the North: Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, 2024), which explores the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey from the perspective of women who played critical roles.
- Matthew Wills, “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” JSTOR Daily (September 8, 2024): LINK. A reflection on Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s seminal 2005 article “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” which argued that the fight for Black freedom was far longer than the period assigned to the movement in 1950s–1960s. This dominant narrative distorts the movement’s longer history and often misses the deeper connections between racial and economic justice.
Memory and Repair:
- John Kiess, “Slavery and the work of repair at Loyola University Maryland,” Medium (September 9, 2024): LINK. CIC member Loyola University grapples with its historic role at the center of slavery and Jesuit higher education. A task force found evidence of direct financial connection between Loyola’s founding and the proceeds of the Georgetown University sale of 272 enslaved people. Now the college will focus on the ongoing work of repair through research, expanding access, and strengthening DEIJ support.
- “New York City lawmakers approve bill to study slavery and reparations,” The Grio (September 13, 2024): LINK. NYC looks to address its history under the slave system and explore reparations for descendants of enslaved people. If signed into law, the city will work on recommendations and create a Truth and Reconciliation Committee by 2027.
- David Paulsen, “Chicago diocese confronts legacy of slavery with Repentance, Repair and Reconciliation Project,” Episcopal News Service (September 11, 2024): LINK. Episcopalians in Chicago are reckoning with their denomination’s legacy of slavery by forming an Antiracism Commission. The commission will recommend actions to repair the harms of the past. The action in Chicago follows similar efforts by Episcopal dioceses in Maryland, Virginia, New York, Texas, New Jersey, and Washington.
- “Does Memory Matter? Why Are Universities Studying Slavery and Their Pasts?” YouTube (September 10, 2024): LINK. From a public course of lectures by Yale historian David Blight, who “examines the impact of slavery and racism on American institutions, past, present, and future. This course works from an assumption that racial slavery was a central theme of the history of the Americas, and its many endings and legacies live with us still.”
- Cindy Forrest, “Lynchburg sidewalks now bear ‘silent witness’ to city’s history of slavery,” Cardinal News (September 9, 2024): LINK. A public history program in Virginia aims to commemorate locations associated with the experiences of enslaved people who built the city of Lynchburg.
Women, Art, and Resistance:
- Dalila Scruggs, “In Elizabeth Catlett’s Work, Beauty Became Direct Action,” Brooklyn Museum (September 13, 2024): LINK. The author explores the life of Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), a Black sculptor and printmaker who used her art to fight against racism and advocate for social justice. Catlett believed that beauty in art could inspire and educate the community, making it a powerful tool for liberation; her work and life continue to resonate with contemporary movements for anti-racism and intersectional feminism.
- Norrell Edwards, “Black Women’s Fiction and Medical Experimentation,” Black Perspectives (September 9, 2024): LINK. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted longstanding racial inequalities in healthcare and renewed discussions about the historical exploitation of Black bodies in medical experimentation. Black women authors are using fiction to explore these ideas.
- Keisha N. Blain, “Enslaved Women’s Resistance to Slavery and Gendered Violence,” Black Perspectives (September 5, 2024): LINK. Enslaved women in Early America resisted slavery and gendered violence by using the legal system to assert their rights and challenge their status.
Other Links:
- Elie Mystal, “White People Have Never Forgiven Haitians for Claiming Their Freedom,” The Nation (September 13, 2024): LINK. Americans (well, white Americans) have feared Haiti since the nation’s successful slave-led revolution in 1804: “Haiti and Haitians, even after all this time, remain a threat to the essential narrative of white supremacy: it’s a country that exists without appeals to whiteness. … Haiti is used as the cautionary tale for what happens when you don’t play by the white man’s rules.”
- Mark A. Brown, “Educational, employment inequities are costing the US trillions of dollars,” USA Today (September 12, 2024): LINK. An essay by the current president of Tuskegee University (the noted HBCU and a member of CIC), cast in the form of an open letter to the institution’s founder, Booker T. Washington. Brown notes that “there’s no single barrier preventing Black students from realizing their full potential — it’s an entire ecosystem of inequity. And these disparities are affecting more than just the students themselves. Recent research suggests that educational and employment inequities have cost the American economy trillions of dollars in lost output over the past 30 years, impacting all of us.”
- Cara Anthony, “Learning a family secret helped us talk about our racial trauma,” The Emancipator (September 12, 2024): LINK. The author (a health reporter) explores the trauma of two Black men killed decades apart in Sikeston, Missouri (a lynching in 1942, a police shooting in 2020) — and learns about her own family’s painful past in the process.
- Tobin Miller Shearer, “Black church leaders brought religion to politics in the ’60s — but it was dramatically different from today’s white Christian nationalism,” The Conversation (September 6, 2024): LINK. The author begins with a surprising comparison between white Christian nationalism c. 2024 and Black religious activism during the Civil Rights Movement: both groups “believed that God was punishing their beloved country. Both groups called for repentance and fundamental change… [and] asserted that their faith had something to say on matters of racial identity and power politics.”
- “Black August & Armed Struggle: Prof. Gerald Horne on Panthers, Communists and Liberals in California,” Democracy Now (August 30, 2024): LINK. Historian Gerald Horne discusses Black August (an annual commemoration of Black resistance that began in 1979) in an interview about his new book, Armed Struggle? Panthers and Communists; Black Nationalists and Liberals in Southern California Through the Sixties and Seventies (International Publishers, 2024).