When Booker T. Washington stepped to the podium at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 to give a speech on race relations, two things happened. First, many fellow Black Americans, including W.E.B. Du Bois, derided his speech as “The Atlanta Compromise,” because Washington called the agitation for social equality “the extremest folly,” advocating instead slow, steady, […]
Washington, D.C.– The National Museum of African American History and Culture director faces numerous challenges in creating the official African-American Smithsonian Exhibit. Among the biggest, of course, is: What story will it tell? As part of the Smithsonian, the museum bears the burden of being the “official” — that is, the government’s — version of […]
In his seminal work, Race Matters, Dr. Cornel West questions matters of economics and politics, as well as addressing the crisis in Black leadership. The book was written in 1993, but many of its themes are salient today. His scholarship has come to be recognized globally and West, himself, is known for his combination of […]
PHILADELPHIA – A new outdoor exhibit is opening in the city’s historic district after years of protests, research and debate about how to balance the stories of the nation’s battle for independence with its history of slavery.
99 years ago, the Fraternity Omega Psi Phi was founded by Edgar Amos Love, Oscar James Cooper and Frank Coleman, students at Howard University on November, 17th 1911. Several prominent African Americans have joined the ranks of Omega Psi Phi, including adviser to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, political activist, Jesse Jackson, basketball players Shaquille O’Neal […]
The federal government said the names of 581 black World War I veterans are missing from bronze plaques hanging outside the courthouse in Natchez.
Richard (“Dick”) Gregory was born (1932). Jesse James Payne was lynched in Madison County, Florida (1945). Forty-six Black and white sailors injured in race riot on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk of North Vietnam (1972). Basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain died at age 63 (1999). Take a look at some more moments in Black History below: […]
Jamaican national hero, Paul Bogle, leads a successful protest march to the Morant Bay Courthouse (1865). The elevator as well as safety devices for elevators where invented by Alexander Miles, Patent # 371,207 (1887). C.O. Bailiff patented the shampoo headrest (1898). NAACP organizes the Education Fund and Legal Defense (1939) Prison uprising, Washington, D.C., jail […]
I’m a native of Atlanta and a lifelong liberal. My dad was born in Birmingham. His mother’s family owned a plantation in South Carolina before the Civil War. I don’t know how many people they owned. They owned people is the important thing. I don’t know what they were like outside of those facts. They […]
African Americans replace reluctant whites on the field of battle due to rising white desertions in the Continental Army (1777). Monroe Baker, a well-to-do Black businessman, named mayor of St. Martin, Louisiana (1867). He was probably the first Black to serve as mayor of a town. First Reconstruction legislature met in Richmond, Virginia (1869). Booker […]
