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Colored Conventions Project exhibit banner with images of formerly enslaved peoples over map of Illinois.

Black Organizing in Pre-Civil War Illinois: Creating Community, Demanding Justice

Their main objective was to draw attention to racist state policies and demand their repeal.
by Kate Masur, Emiliano Aguilar, Hope McCaffrey, Mikala Stokes, Marquis Taylor via Colored Conventions Project on September 10, 2020
Collage of Supreme Court and 14th amendment-related images.

Reversing the Legacy of Slaughter-House

A careful examination of the Privileges or Immunities Clause shows what we lost 150 years ago.
by Ilan Wurman via Law & Liberty on April 3, 2023
Photograph shows two white men overseeing African American men hammering boulders as others walk with wheelbarrows.

Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires

Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
by Margie Mason, Robin McDowell via AP News on September 19, 2022
Bernard Lynch's slave pen in St. Louis, with many potential buyers standing outside.

The Remarkable Story of Mattie J. Jackson

Her narrative documents the very real dangers enslaved runaways experienced while traveling through so-called "free states" of the North.
by Nick Sacco via Muster on March 29, 2022
Elmwood Cemetery, where Henry Ellett, Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward are buried

A Deadly Introduction

Who was Henry Ellett? Looking at his grave you wouldn't know much about him.
by Alexis Coe via Study Marry Kill on October 13, 2021
Historical photo of a group of black men and women

The United States' First Civil Rights Movement

A new history charts the radical agitation around Black rights and freedom back to the early nineteenth century. 
by Kellie Carter Jackson via The Nation on June 16, 2021
Engraving of freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867

Forging an Early Black Politics

The pre-Civil War North was a landscape not of unremitting white supremacy but of persistent struggles over racial justice by both Blacks and whites.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on June 11, 2021
Fort Mose Historic State Park entrance sign.

Fort Mose: The First All-Black Settlement in the U.S.

Be Woke presents Black history in two minutes (or so).
via Black History In Two Minutes on September 4, 2020
Lincoln Memorial.

The Civil War Almost Didn't End Slavery

On the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, we should reflect on the arduous battle to rid the nation once and for all of the ‘peculiar institution.’
by Kevin M. Levin via The Daily Beast on June 26, 2017
A line of prison laborers by a railroad.

“One Continuous Graveyard”: Emancipation and the Birth of the Professional Police Force

After emancipation, prison labor replaced slavery as a way for white Southerners to enforce a racial hierarchy.
by Keri Leigh Merritt via Black Perspectives on July 11, 2016
Butter churn by a kitchen fireplace.

Mexican Freedom, American Slavery

Mexico's resistance to the institution of slavery made it a land ripe for African American immigration in the 1800s.
by María Esther Hammack via Black Perspectives on February 12, 2024
A group of black prisoners, shoveling.
partner

Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment

Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.
by Daryl Michael Scott, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on September 21, 2023
Collage of Juneteenth-related images.

The Story We’ve Been Told About Juneteenth Is Wrong

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.
by Peniel E. Joseph via Texas Monthly on May 18, 2023
Sketch of a gathering of African Americans gathering in a meetinghouse.

“Nativity Gives Citizenship”: Teaching Antislavery Constitutionalism Through Black Conventions

The demand of antislavery activists for accused fugitives to be guaranteed a jury trial was an implicit recognition of Black citizenship.
by Erik J. Chaput via Commonplace on March 7, 2023
Black and white photo of Saidiya Hartman in a field of flowers

The Enduring Power of “Scenes of Subjection”

Saidiya Hartman’s unrelenting exploration of slavery and freedom in the United States first appeared in 1997 and has lost none of its relevance.
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on October 17, 2022
The American flag depicted upside down, in a beige color scheme.

Making the Constitution Safe for Democracy

The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment offers severe penalties for menacing the right to vote—if anyone can figure out how to enforce it.
by Anthony Conwright via The Forum on August 17, 2022
Political cartoon of Andrew Johnson holding a leaking kettle labeled "The Reconstructed South" towards a woman representing liberty and Columbia, carrying a baby representing the newly approved 14th Amendment.
partner

The Pro-Democratic Fourteenth Amendment

At the heart of recent US Supreme Court decisions, the Fourteenth Amendment was framed to require free speech and free elections in the South.
by Garrett Epps, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on July 22, 2022
A picture of the front of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s Faux ‘Originalism’

The conservative Supreme Court's favorite judicial philosophy requires a very, very firm grasp of history — one that none of the justices seem to possess.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on June 26, 2022
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs behind President Biden in the State Dining Room of the White House
partner

Activists Have Always Been Frustrated at Allies’ Insistence on Gradual Change

Why abolitionist Lydia Maria Child raged at President Lincoln’s political calculations.
by Lydia Moland via Made by History on March 28, 2022
Illustration after American Gothic but in the context of the Black experience: African American farmers looking away, house foreclosed, lightning in the sky.

How Thousands of Black Farmers Were Forced Off Their Land

Black people own just 2 percent of farmland in the United States. A decades-long history of loan denials at the USDA is a major reason why.
by Kali Holloway via The Nation on November 1, 2021
A cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Johnson as a king and the race riots that occurred at a Radical Republican convention in New Orleans.

‘The Failed Promise’ Review: The Mad King and the Lost Cause

Frederick Douglass and Republican legislators had high hopes for Andrew Johnson—but ended up impeaching him.
by Randall Fuller via The Wall Street Journal on August 20, 2021
Two hooded KKK members

The Ku Klux Klan Was Also a Bosses’ Association

The KKK violently resisted the revolutionary gains of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and sought to keep the black masses toiling in submission.
by Chad Pearson via Jacobin on July 27, 2021
Stokely Charmichael with microphone, speaking to crowd. Supporters are standing behind him on stage.

The Birth of Black Power

Stokely Carmichael and the speech that changed the course of the civil rights movement.
by Sally Greene via The American Scholar on April 26, 2021
engraving of Harriet Beecher Stowe
partner

A Forgotten 19th-Century Story Can Help Us Navigate Today’s Political Fractures

Reconciliation is good — but not at any cost.
by Ellen Gruber Garvey via Made by History on March 23, 2021
Thaddeus Stevens

The Radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens understood far better than most that fully uprooting slavery meant overthrowing the South’s economic system and challenging property rights.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on March 1, 2021

Meet Joseph Rainey, the First Black Congressman

Born enslaved, he was elected to Congress in the wake of the Civil War. But the impact of this momentous step in U.S. race relationships did not last long.
by Bobby J. Donaldson via Smithsonian on January 4, 2021

An American Pogrom

Uncovering the truth about the 1898 massacre of black voters in Wilmington, North Carolina.
by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on October 30, 2020

The Origins of Policing in America

How American policing grew out of efforts to control the labor of poor and enslaved people.
by Chenjerai Kumanyika, Khalil Gibran Muhammad via Washington Post on September 24, 2020
Lithograph depicting police attacking African Americans in New Orleans, 1874

On Riots and Resistance

Exploring freedpeople’s struggle against police brutality during Reconstruction.
by Robert D. Bland via Muster on August 11, 2020
A campaign illustration featuring busts of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson over festoons featuring eagles, smoke, and the American flag.

Andrew Johnson’s Abuse of Pardons Was Relentless

Worried that the presidential power to undo convictions can be taken too far? Look no further than Lincoln’s successor.
by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on July 14, 2020
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