slavery

Gingrich Confronts History in South Carolina

January 24, 2012

“It’s not that I’m a good debater. It’s that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people,” announced the victorious Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. Republican voters [only 2% were African Americans] saw his tough, angry, racial language as straight talking. He eagerly strummed racial themes—Black urban pupils serve as assistant janitors to learn […]

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The Women who Gave us Christmas

December 22, 2010

Before Christmas emerged as a commercial success it led a checkered social life. In the 13 colonies it was known not as a Silent Night, Holy Night but as a heavy drinking, brawling festival, a raucous blend of July 4th and New Years Eve. But as the struggle over slavery in the United States heated […]

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Celebrating a Victory for Freedom

January 7, 2008

This Christmas Eve, the freedom-loving Bush administration has a chance to mark the anniversary of a great victory for formerly oppressed people on U.S. soil. The President is unlikely, however, to notice or heed the meaning of this particular milestone, whose cast of characters and historical lessons he would undoubtedly regard as all wrong. December […]

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Blood, Race and Cherokee Sovereignty

March 3, 2007

As President Bill Clinton and others arrived in Selma, Alabama for the 42nd anniversary of the “bloody Sunday” march that prodded Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Cherokee Nation chose a lower road. Members voted overwhelmingly for an amendment to their constitution that revokes citizenship rights for 2,800 members because their ancestors […]

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John Brown: A White Role Model

January 21, 2006

This year marks the bicentennial of John Brown, born in 1800, and he was executed by the state of Virginia 141 years ago, on December 2, 1859. This year a PBS documentary film continued an effort that began even before his execution to sully his reputation. Why? He was a white man who gave his […]

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