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The author’s mother, 1927.

Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life

In "Ordinary Notes," Sharpe considers Black culture “in all of its shade and depth and glow.”
Map showing density of Southern-born whites living outside the south in 1900.

The Confederate Diaspora

A summary of how white migration out of the postbellum South entrenched Confederate culture across the U.S. during postwar reconciliation.
Donellia Chives, a trustee of Penn Center.

White Gold from Black Hands: The Gullah Geechee Fight for a Legacy after Slavery

Descendants of the west Africans who picked the cotton that made Manchester rich are struggling to keep their distinct culture alive.
Photo of the Penn and Slavery Project augmented reality tour

A Bare and Open Truth: The Penn and Slavery Project and the Public

When a university denied its legacy, students and faculty stepped in to do the research.
Image from the documentary "Descendant" showing a man standing on a beach looking over the water.

Reckoning with the Slave Ship Clotilda

A new documentary tells the story of the last known slave ship to enter the United States and takes on the difficult question of how to memorialize America’s history of racial violence.
Wood engraving showing plantation scenes

Value and Its Sources: Slavery and the History of Art

Two new studies ask readers to think expansively about art’s involvement in a broader system of racial capitalism.
Smallpox vaccine vial and syringe.

Never Forget That Early Vaccines Came From Testing on Enslaved People

The practice of vaccination in the U.S. cannot be divorced from the history of slavery.
Chains with ivy on it

Endowed by Slavery

Harvard made headlines by announcing that it would devote $100 million to remedying “the harms of the university’s ties to slavery.”
A gate opening to the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass.

Harvard Leaders and Staff Enslaved 79 People, University Finds

The school said it had benefited from slave-generated wealth and practiced racial discrimination.
Illustration of Spanish slaves unloading ice.

Cuba & the US: Necessary Mirrors

Exponentially more enslaved Africans were forced to the lands that now make up Latin America rather than the United States. Where is their story?
Drawing of a spiral bound notebook with pen markings.

Fighting Racial Bias With an Unlikely Weapon: Footnotes

A collaborative project by legal scholars sets out to make visible the vast array of legal precedents based on cases involving enslaved people.
A former slave cabin, surrounded by tourists.

‘These Are Our Ancestors’: Descendants of Enslaved People Are Shifting Plantation Tourism

At three plantations in Charleston, S.C., Black descendants are connecting with their family’s history and helping reshape the narrative.
Artwork by Alanna Fields of an enslaved individual.

The Dark Underside of Representations of Slavery

Will the Black body ever have the opportunity to rest in peace?
Peanuts, bagged and ready for transport, are stacked in pyramids at Kano, Northern Region, Nigeria, 1955.

After Slavery: How the End of Atlantic Slavery Paved a Path to Colonialism

Abolition in Africa brought longed-for freedoms, but also political turmoil, economic collapse and rising enslavement.
a Black woman sits on stairs and looks out the window of an old New England style house

60 Enslaved People Once Toiled for a Rich Landowner in Medford

“This is not just history about Black Americans. This is American history. Slavery is American history. And we want people to understand that.”
Map of Africa

It’s Time for the British Royal Family to Make Amends for Centuries of Profiting From Slavery

An empire built on the backs and blood of enslaved Africans.
Photo of an elderly African American man seated on a wicker chair in front of a porch trellis..

The Living Son of a Slave

The child of someone once considered a piece of property instead of a human being, Daniel Smith is a flesh-and-blood reminder that slavery wasn't that long ago
Illustration of slavecatchers surrounding a fugitive.

‘A World Turned Upside Down’: How Slavery Morphed into Today’s Carceral State

A new book uses the story of a former slave trader who profited after the Civil War by trafficking in convict labor to trace the historical roots of mass incarceration and racial profiling.

Higher Education's Reckoning with Slavery

Two decades of activism and scholarship have led to critical self-examination.

The Consequences of Forgetting

The reparations struggle is about remembering that America was built on slavery, but also about fighting for all working people.
Art installation, "Public Soil Memory for the Plantationocene" at the Sandy Spring Museum

How the Soil Remembers Plantation Slavery

What haunts the land? When two artists dig up the tangled history of slavery and soil exhaustion in Maryland, soil memory reveals ongoing racial violence.
Railworkers watch dignitaries on an approaching train.
partner

How Slave Labor Built the State of Florida—Decades After the Civil War

Behind the whitewashed history of the Sunshine State.

How One College Succeeded at Grappling With a Racist Past

Comparing the methods of Oxford University in the U.K. with those of the University of Mississippi shows there’s much to learn.

How a Court Answered a Forgotten Question of Slavery’s Legacy

As Americans debated how the Civil War period is publicly commemorated, a battle over a related question was finally put to rest.

A Case for Reparations at the University of Chicago

What does the institution owe the descendants of slaves?

Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery

Blacks continue to die younger than people in other groups in the Black Belt.

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

A wealthy white lawyer has spent 16 years and millions of dollars turning the Whitney Plantation into a memorial to the nation's past.

Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race

"I don't believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved."
Elder M. Andrew Robinson-Gaither demonstrates for reparations for slavery.

The Thirteenth Amendment and a Reparations Program

The amendment, which brought an end to slavery in the U.S., could be used to begin a national debate on reparations.
Cover of "Empire of Necessity" featuring a painting of violence being wrought on enslaved men.

The Bleached Bones of the Dead

What the modern world owes slavery. (It’s more than back wages).

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