Eric Herschthal— It does not take much effort to find evidence of the ways science, medicine, and technology contribute to systemic racism. The Covid pandemic exposed how lack of access to quality medical care, coupled with the prevalence of Black people in low-paying front-line jobs, contributed to the pandemic’s disparate
Manisha Sinha— Abolition was a radical, interracial movement, one which addressed the entrenched problems of exploitation and disfranchisement in a liberal democracy and anticipated debates over race, labor, and empire. Caricatured as unthinking, single-minded fanatics who caused a “needless war,” abolitionists are often compared unfavorably to political moderates and compromise-minded
Manisha Sinha— Caricatured as unthinking, single-minded fanatics who caused a “needless war,” abolitionists are often compared unfavorably to political moderates and compromise-minded statesmen. Their resurrection as freedom fighters during the modern civil rights era has been relatively brief. It is often dismissed as neoabolitionist history. While a bland celebration of
Leonardo Marques— When faced with the numbers of the transatlantic slave trade, U.S. citizens are frequently surprised by the fact that less than 400,000 enslaved Africans were carried to North America out of the more than ten million people that were disembarked by slave ships in the Americas between the
Manisha Sinha— Most Americans greeted Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s decision to put Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist heroine of the Underground Railroad, on the front of the twenty-dollar bill and relegate the Indian hunting President Andrew Jackson to its back with approval. The ironies abound. Fugitive slaves like Tubman most feared
In 1792, a ship set sail from England with the best of intentions. Its tragic journey would change the course of history forever. Historian Billy Smith uncovered a remarkable story of tragedy unleashed from misguided humanitarianism in his book Ship of Death: A Voyage that Changed the Atlantic World. The Hankey was engaged
2007 marked the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, an anniversary celebrated with government programs as a great turning point in the history of the nation. Yet across the Atlantic, in the Jamaican parish of St. Elizabeth, a bicentennial of an entirely different kind was commemorated:
Ivan Lett— Here in New Haven, the memory of La Amistad and its historic court trial pervades the memory of our coastline. Popular recreations of the slave ship’s story, such as the 1997 Spielberg film or the ship replica at Mystic Seaport, remind us of the horrors of slavery and
National African American History Month! Yale Press has a wide range of books covering this topic for you to check out. Here’s just a sample: Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, edited by Susan Earle In paintings, murals, and book illustrations, Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) produced the most powerful visual legacy of