Many black scholars—especially those who study black life, history, and culture—would recognize an uncomfortable and familiar situation that epitomizes ...
Tag: African American
Rethinking Civil Rights, Reimagining Black Liberation
Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter ushered in a new era of social ...
Citizens to Come: Building Beyond the 14th Amendment
On the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment we are called upon ...
Citizens: 150 Years of the 14th Amendment
It is possible to tell the story of the 14th Amendment’s adoption as one driven by the maneuvering of highly placed lawmakers—judges and members of ...
Toward the Black Girl Future
To read Eve L. Ewing is to read Chicago. Born and raised in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood in the 1980s and 1990s, Ewing’s love for the city is palpable in ...
Free the Most Oppressed First
Do we still need to talk about identity politics? In the wake of the 2016 election and amid the ongoing parody that is the Trump administration, the subject has ...
Black Women Leaders, Then and Now
In August 1966, Ebony magazine published an entire issue devoted to “The Negro Woman.” In it was an article by television personality and journalist ...
Zora Neale Hurston Against the World
Throughout her life, Zora Neale Hurston held fast to a belief in the individual’s power against seemingly insurmountable forces, especially institutional racism ...
Zora Neale Hurston in the Making
Zora Neale Hurston’s second trip to Africatown was a chance for redemption. An earlier visit to the settlement outside Mobile, Alabama, had produced ...
Black Banks Can’t Fix Racial Capitalism
In this article I interview University of Georgia School of Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, whose latest book, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial ...
We See You, Race Women
When I was in graduate school, whenever a black woman scholar presented her work a peculiar phenomenon emerged: peers always and only remarked on the speaker’s person, rather than on her ideas. At ...
Public Thinker: Keisha N. Blain on Black Women’s Intellectual History
Keisha N. Blain has quickly become one of the most innovative and influential ...
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Grassroots Struggle in Memphis
People from around the world will set their sights on Memphis, Tennessee ...
“Our Emancipation Day”: Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago
Chicago’s strategies to keep African American movement limited throughout the city . . .
Martin Luther King Jr. and Workers’ Rights in Baltimore
In 1968, municipal sanitation workers angered by poor wages and dangerous working conditions . . .
The King of Atlanta: Martin Luther King Jr. and Public Memory
On April 4th, the world will commemorate the sacrifice of Atlanta’s own Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. American ...
Martin Luther King Jr. and Milwaukee: 200 Nights and a Tragedy
The tragic murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 sent shock waves ...
Memorializing Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, DC
My introduction to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in the home of my ...
The Ambivalence of Appropriation
One day in the summer of 2001, English professor and cultural critic Eric Lott received a phone call from rock journalist Greil Marcus. Marcus had some news ...
Black Athletes, Black Activists
Today the 2018 Winter Olympics kick off in Pyeongchang, South Korea. With a US president who has gone out of his way to attack black athletes and Black Lives ...