legacy of slavery — Bunk History

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Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race

"I don't believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved."

by Corey G. Johnson, Bryan Stevenson via The Marshall Project on June 24, 2015

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.

by Ramsin Canon via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on July 12, 2014

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).

by Greg Grandin via Tom Dispatch on February 23, 2014

National Museum of African American History and Culture.

What It Means to Tell the Truth About America

And what happens when empirical fact is labeled “improper ideology.”

by Clint Smith via The Atlantic on April 21, 2025

Boston’s Faneuil Hall at night.

When Is History Advocacy?

Advocacy should not be a dirty word.

by Nick DeLuca via Contingent on March 30, 2025

A flooded road.

Jamestown Is Sinking

In the Tidewater region of Virginia, history is slipping beneath the waves. In the Anthropocene, a complicated past is vanishing.

by Daegan Miller, Greta Pratt via Places Journal on March 15, 2025

Slave auction in the United States.

How a Group of 19th-Century Historians Helped Relativize the Violent Legacy of Slavery

On the scholarship and intellectual legacies of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, William Dunning and other academics.

by Scott Spillman via Literary Hub on March 10, 2025

Farmer working a mule-drawn plow.

Racism Isn’t the Only Cause of the Racial Wealth Gap

Widening the lens to capitalism itself could yield insights on how to close the gap.

by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on March 6, 2025

A family of formerly enslaved people outside their house in Fredericksburg, Virginia, circa 1862–1865.

The Missing Persons of Reconstruction

Enslaved families were regularly separated. A new history chronicles the tenacious efforts of the emancipated to be reunited with their loved ones.

by Joshua D. Rothman via The New Republic on February 26, 2025

A drawing of a scuba diver holding a flare, exploring the wreck of a slave ship underwater.

Dredging Up the Ghostly Secrets of Slave Ships

A global network of maritime archeologists is excavating slave shipwrecks—and reconnecting Black communities to the deep.

by Julian Lucas via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025

A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.

The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.

by Justin Hawkins via Made By History on January 31, 2025

Black farmer harvesting kale.

Black Earth

In North Carolina, a Black farmer purchased the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved—and is reclaiming his family’s story and the soil beneath his feet.

by Christina Cooke via The Bitter Southerner on November 25, 2024

Drawing of the Constitutional Convention, by John W. Winkler.

Strange Political Bedfellows

The origins of the Electoral College are entwined with slavery, but not in the way that recent accounts have suggested.

by Mark McKibbin, Denver Brunsman via HNN on October 9, 2024

Movie poster of The Birth of a Nation depicting a Ku Klux Klan member as a knight.

How the Work of Thomas Dixon Shaped White America’s Racist Fantasies

On the literary and cinematic legacy of white supremacy in the United States.

by Joel Edward Goza via Literary Hub on September 23, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at a podium in front of the Irish and American flags.

Kamala Harris’ Purported Irish Ancestry

The candidate's potential ties to an Irish slave owner invite us to reexamine Ireland’s multilayered historical identity.

by Christine Kinealy, Kim DaCosta, Miriam Nyhan Grey via The Conversation on September 6, 2024

Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

Michelle Obama Was Right to Clap Back at Trump on 'Black Jobs'

The idea of "Black jobs" owes to 18th and 19th century divisions of labor designed to uphold slavery and white supremacy.

by Whitney Nell Stewart via Made By History on August 28, 2024

Members of the Mason family, St. Inigoes, Maryland, circa 1890–1909.

How Bondage Built the Church

Swarns’s book about a sale of enslaved people by Jesuit priests to save Georgetown University reminds us that the legacy of slavery is the legacy of resistance.

by Tiya Miles via New York Review of Books on May 2, 2024

Sign reading "Welcome to the People's University for Palestine" at Harvard protest encampment

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.

by Erik Baker via Boston Review on April 25, 2024

"Soulsville" mural in Memphis, Tennessee.

Capitalism and (Under)Development in the American South

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy.

by Keri Leigh Merritt via Aeon on April 2, 2024

A protest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray.

The Problem with Baltimore

The impact of the city's history with slavery.

by Anthony Smooth via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2024

James Baldwin.

What James Baldwin Saw

A documentary that follows the writer’s late-in-life journey to the South chronicles his vision for Black politics in a post–Civil Rights era world.

by Kelli Weston via The Nation on March 5, 2024

Black Archives Look to Preservation Amid Growing US History Bans

Matter-of-fact accounting of the legal mechanism of slavery provides insight into American history and the country’s fraught present.

by Adria R. Walker via The Guardian on January 15, 2024

A computer-drawn image of George Moses Horton.

Stand Up and Spout

Cecil Brown wants to digitally revive the enslaved antebellum poet George Moses Horton. Can digital technology help reconnect us to the tradition he embodied?

by Matt Sandler via The Baffler on January 8, 2024

Leaders of the 1963 March on Washington posing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial. August 28, 1963.

How the 1619 Project Distorted History

The 1619 Project claimed to reveal the unknown history of slavery. It ended up helping to distort the real history of slavery and the struggle against it.

by James Oakes via Jacobin on December 27, 2023

Jared Miller poses as his ancestor Richard Oliver, a soldier in the 20th Colored Infantry.

Descendants of Black Civil War Heroes Wear Their Heritage With Pride

A bold new photographic project asks modern-day Americans to recreate portraits of their 19th-century ancestors in painstakingly accurate fashion.

by Jennie Rothenburg Gritz via Smithsonian on December 13, 2023

African American man looking at a dilapidated house

A New Doc, "Silver Dollar Road," Chronicles the Dispossession of Black Americans

"It's the story of a family who had been denied justice about a piece of land they owned for at least 160 years."

by Raoul Peck, Ed Rampell via Jacobin on October 20, 2023

A Newton's Cradle where a black ball prepares to swing into 4 white ones.

Black Success, White Backlash

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.

by Elijah Anderson via The Atlantic on October 16, 2023

Collage of plantation logbooks superimposed over photos of enslaved people.

A Racist Scientist Commissioned Photos of Enslaved People. One Descendant Wants to Reclaim Them.

There's no clear system in place to repatriate remains of captive Africans or objects associated with them.

by Jennifer Berry Hawes via ProPublica on October 9, 2023

Deborah Taylor Mapp at her home in the Broad Creek neighborhood of Norfolk, Va.

The Long History of Universities Displacing Black People

The expansion of higher education in Virginia uprooted hundreds of black families.

by Louis Hansen via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 11, 2023

Torn photos juxtaposing the face of a Black man and an Asian woman.

A New Theory of Race in America

How white-dominated racial power produces inter-ethnic group conflict.

by Rhoda Feng, Claire Jean Kim via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 8, 2023

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