History

Tearing Down the Flags of Hatred and Oppression

July 9, 2015

1935 was half a century before Bree Newsome was born and 80 years before she climbed that flagpole to pull down a Confederate flag that stood for slaveholders, racial terror and treason. She and James Tyson her spotter were quickly arrested. On July 26, 1935 Bill Bailey, a broad-shouldered Irish American seaman and union organizer, […]

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“The Birth of a Nation”: A Century Later

February 17, 2015

By an odd coincidence the first week of Black History Month this February, Time magazine ran an article on the 100th anniversary of the first public showing of the movie classic The Birth of a Nation. This 22-reel, 3-hour and 10 minute silent film was Hollywood’s first blockbuster, first great historical epic, first full-length film (when […]

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NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH: The Politics of Thanksgiving Day

November 5, 2014

Thanksgiving remains the most treasured holiday in the United States, honored by Presidents since Abraham Lincoln initiated the Holiday to rouse patriotism in a war that was not going well. Thanksgiving has often served political ends. In 2003, in the current age of US Middle East invasions, President George Bush flew to Bagdad, Iraq to […]

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Ill Winds Drove Columbus

October 9, 2014

Columbus’s Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria were driven across the Atlantic by the same ill winds that from 1095 to 1272 launched nine Crusades to capture Muslim Jerusalem. Defeated and humiliated the invaders suffered staggering human losses, left royal treasuries depleted, and convinced Christian leaders to do pay lip service to another try. Except for […]

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Thumbnail image for An Ancient Seminole Christmas Gift: Freedom

An Ancient Seminole Christmas Gift: Freedom

December 17, 2013

Those who honor the memory of Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and the many others who gave their lives to advance liberty and justice in the United States, are invited to accept this Christmas gift for your memory bank. On Christmas day 1837, 176 years ago, the Africans and Native Americans who […]

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Thumbnail image for The Battle to Desegregate San Francisco Streetcars

The Battle to Desegregate San Francisco Streetcars

April 30, 2013

Only months after San Francisco’s horse-powered streetcar companies during the Civil War dispatched their streetcars—with orders to only accept white passengers—African American citizens began to directly challenge this discrimination. On April 17, 1863 Charlotte Brown, a young African American woman from a prominent family, boarded a streetcar and was forced off. Determined to assert her […]

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