Slavery

Unearthing The Black Newspaper That Sold The California Dream To Freed Slaves

May 29, 2019 Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, Cjr.org Educate! History, Media, News, Slavery

STANDING ON SLAUSON AVENUE last month, Arianne Edmonds joined Angelenos who gathered along the 25-mile route of rapper Nipsey Hussle’s funeral procession. Thousands of fans thronged sidewalks to raise a fist or a camera toward his hearse as it passed through mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods in South Los Angeles. Even in mourning, they celebrated a local son whose murder only magnified the odds he defied to succeed. Edmonds is a fifth-generation Los Angeles native. Her family history in the city stretches back to the turn of the 20th century...

Federal Workers: Shutdown And Out

January 21, 2019 Saurav Sarkar, Labornotes.org Educate! Class Struggle, Government, Government Shutdown, Slavery, Wages, Workers

What would you do if management could force you to work without pay, lock you out with no consequences, and fire you for going on strike? That’s the situation facing 800,000 federal workers—and their unions—during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Forty percent of the government’s civilian workforce besides postal workers are being deprived of money to pay for rent, gas, groceries, and car and student loan payments. They include 420,000 workers who are being forced to work without pay and 380,000 who are locked out. The shutdown is the result of President Trump’s demand that Congress fund an anti-immigrant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats in Congress are refusing to go along with the idea.

University Of Glasgow Commits To Pay Reparations For Profiting From African Enslavement, Providing A Model For Others To Follow

January 15, 2019 By David Love, Atlantablackstar.com Create! History, Profit, Reparations, Slavery

Even as those who oppose reparations argue it is unfeasible or too costly, one British university is proving that it is both possible and necessary to make amends for the enslavement and genocide of African people. While the steps made so far may not seem so substantial, this institution could provide a model for others to follow. The University of Glasgow made £200 million ($255 million) from the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to a comprehensive report, and because of that will make reparations through a “reparative justice program” and establishing ties with the University of the West Indies.

Noise Demos Ring In NYE Against Backdrop Of Prison Slavery

January 2, 2019 Staff, Itsgoingdown.org Resist! Prison Labor, Prisons, Protest Demonstrations, Slavery

This year in over 20 cities across the US and Canada, anarchists, abolitionists, autonomists, and other rebels took part in noise demonstrations on New Year’s Eve, as has become an ongoing tradition within the movement. Demonstrations were organized outside of a variety of facilities, jails, prisons, and detention centers, and occurred against a backdrop of not only continued struggle and action against prison slavery, migrant detention, and child separation, but also growing anger to the carceral State in general.

Cuba Calls For Reparations For Descendants Of African Slave Trade

November 27, 2018 Staff, Misiones.minrex.gob.cu Create! Cuba, History, Reparations, Slavery

We support the intervention made by the Bahamas on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Cuba engaged in negotiations and supported General Assembly resolutions 61/19 and 70/7, which commemorated the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, designated this International Day and established the Permanent Memorial. My country attaches particular importance to the annual commemoration of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a particularly sensitive issue for the Cuban people. It would be an unforgivable historic mistake to ignore or intend to forget the past.

Shockoe Bottom Advocates Demand Mayor Choose A Side

October 8, 2018 Virginia Defenders, Popular Resistance. Resist! Land, Monuments, Racism, Slavery

Longtime advocates for Shockoe Bottom have sent an Open Letter to Richmond, Va., Mayor Levar Stoney asking him to finally take a stand on whether he supports the community-generated proposal for a nine-acre memorial park. The letter refers to “an endless series of discussions, meetings, reports and presentations” concerning the future of Shockoe Bottom, once the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade. “And while all these endless discussions continue, real estate and development deals are being made in the Bottom that would threaten the viability of the memorial park.”

Supreme Court: Difficult Nominations Have Lead To Historical Injustices

September 30, 2018 By Calvin Schermerhorn, The Conversation. Educate! Civil Rights, Congress, Slavery, Supreme Court

Far from being unusual, the hurried and partisan Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh mirrors several notable examples of similarly politicized confirmations in U.S. history. Those conflicts, which ultimately placed justices on the court, yielded some of the most damaging civil rights decisions in our nation’s history. Unlike any other branch of government, Supreme Court justices do not have to face voters at the polls. They have no term limits. Yet the high court is the final arbiter of constitutional rights and protections.

The National Prison Strike Isn’t Over

September 24, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Human Rights, Labor, Prison Strike, Slavery

From August 21 to September 9, prisoners in 17 states went on strike to protest inhuman living and working conditions and to promote ten basic demands. Although the formal strike is over, some prisoners are being retaliated against and others are continuing to strike. We speak with Amani Sawari, a prisoner's rights activist, about the strike, the demands and how we can all provide support to finally end legalized slavery in the United States. For an in-depth discussion of what we learned at the Toronto World Beyond War conference, "Legalizing Peace," subscribe to Clearing the FOG on Patreon and receive our bonus show, Thinking it Through. Visit Patreon.com/ClearingtheFOG.

Meet Haiti’s Founding Father, Whose Black Revolution Was Too Radical For Thomas Jefferson

September 18, 2018 Julia Gaffield, Theconversation.com Educate! Haiti, History, Revolution, Slavery

Crowds cheered as local lawmakers on August 18 unveiled a street sign showing that Rogers Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn would now be called Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, after a Haitian slave turned revolutionary general. When Dessalines declared Haiti’s independence from France in 1804 after a 13-year slave uprising and civil war, he became the Americas’ first black head of state. Supporting the French colonial perspective, leaders across the Americas and Europe immediately demonized Dessalines. Even in the United States, itself newly independent from Britain, newspapers recounted horrific stories of the final years of the Haitian Revolution, a war for independence that took the lives of some 50,000 French soldiers and over 100,000 black and mixed-race Haitians.

500th Anniversary Of The Transatlantic Slave Trade

September 1, 2018 David Keys, Independent.co.uk Educate! History, Racism, Slavery

Almost completely ignored by the modern world, this month marks the 500th anniversary of one of history’s most tragic and significant events – the birth of the Africa to America transatlantic slave trade. New discoveries are now revealing the details of the trade’s first horrific voyages. Exactly five centuries ago – on 18 August 1518 (28 August 1518, if they had been using our modern Gregorian calendar) – the King of Spain, Charles I, issued a charter authorising the transportation of slaves direct from Africa to the Americas. Up until that point (since at least 1510), African slaves had usually been transported to Spain or Portugal and had then been transhipped to the Caribbean. Charles’s decision to create a direct, more economically viable Africa to America slave trade fundamentally changed the nature and scale of this terrible human trafficking industry.

Demanding Wide-Reaching Reforms And An End To Slavery, Inmates In 17 States Plan Prison Strike

August 20, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Prisons, Reform, Slavery, Strikes

The Nationwide Prison Strike is planned for August 21, the day Nat Turner led an uprising of slaves in 1831, until September 9, the 47th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion in which more than 40 people were killed. Organizers of the action, which is endorsed by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), have released a list of ten demands for improvements to their living conditions, sentencing policies, and laws that allow for prison slavery. "All persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction must be paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor," reads the list of demands. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows for "slavery or involuntary servitude...as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

Why Juneteenth Should Be A National Holiday

June 20, 2018 By Tasha Williams, Yesmagazine.org Create! History, Juneteenth, Racism, Slavery

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with a Union regiment. It was over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the enslaved people there and in other areas throughout Texas had not been officially informed that President Abraham Lincoln had decreed they were no longer someone’s property. Granger and his soldiers publicly issued General Order Number 3, telling the people of Texas that “all slaves are free.” The newly freed people of Texas chose that date to commemorate their freedom. This 152-year-old tradition launched by a generation of formerly enslaved people has emerged in the 21st century as a celebration of freedom, and demand for national observation.

The Black American Holiday Everyone Should Celebrate

June 18, 2018 Jamelle Bouie, www.slate.com Educate! Civil War, emancipation, Freedom, Slavery

By Jamelle Bouie for Slate. Officially, the Emancipation Proclamation freed “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State” where the residents were “in rebellion against the United States.” In practice, it applied only to those slaves who lived near Union lines, where they could make an easy escape or take advantage of the Northern advance. News of emancipation would move slowly, which would be compounded by the mass migration of slave owners, who fled their holdings in Louisiana and Mississippi—slaves in tow—following the Union victories at New Orleans in 1862 and Vicksburg in the spring and summer of 1863. Tens of thousands of slaves arrived in Texas, joining the hundreds of thousands in the interior of the state, where they were isolated from most fighting and any news of the war.

Why The Extraordinary Story Of The Last Slave In America Has Finally Come To Light

May 29, 2018 Afua Hirsh, Theguardian.com Educate! History, Slavery

“We stand as living monuments,” wrote the historian Len Garrison, of the black British descendants of slavery and empire. “For those who are afraid of who they must be, are but slaves in a trance.” For Garrison, the idea of the African diaspora as “living monuments” was to some extent figurative. But a new book makes it literal. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave presents the remarkable fact that there were people alive in America who had experienced abduction from Africa – being examined, displayed, traded and enslaved – well into the 20th century. The book is the story of Cudjo Lewis; a man born Oluale Kossola in the Yoruba kingdom of Takkoi. Kossola was the last survivor of the last known slave ship to sail from the African continent to America with a human cargo. Written in the 1930s, but hidden away from a public audience until now, it is also perhaps the last great, unpublished work by the Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston.

The Apocalypse Of Settler Colonialism

April 10, 2018 By Gerald Horne, Monthlyreview.org Educate! Colonialism, History, Slavery

The years between 1603 and 1714 were perhaps the most decisive in English history. At the onset of the seventeenth century, the sceptered isle was a second-class power, but the Great Britain that emerged by the beginning of the eighteenth century was, in many ways, the planet’s reigning superpower.1 It then passed the baton to its revolting spawn, the United States, which has carried global dominance into the present century.2 There are many reasons for this stunning turnabout. Yet any explanation that elides slavery, colonialism, and the shards of an emerging capitalism, along with their handmaiden—white supremacy—is deficient in explanatory power. From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries nearly 13 million Africans were brutally snatched from their homelands, enslaved, and forced to toil for the greater good of European and Euro-American powers, London not least.

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