179 Search results for "12 years a slave"

Remains of 95 Black “convict lease laborers” who were basically post-Civil War slaves found in Texas
Note: Many articles covering this event note that the men and a few women who are the subjects of this piece were identified as contract laborers, but in this historical and sociological context, these people were enslaved, still doing hard plantation labor with no compensation and not out of their own free will. According to […]
Review Roundup: Zora Neale Hurston’s book on one of the last Africans in the Atlantic slave trade
Nearly 90 years after it was first written, Zora Neale Hurston’s series of interviews with one of the last Africans brought to America from the Atlantic slave trade has arrived in bookstores across the country. Barracoon is introduced rather fittingly by Alice Walker, the woman whom we can thank for a revitalized interest and scholarship […]
We can’t talk about Black Greek hazing without talking about slavery
By George Johnson It’s been a few months since Netflix aired the controversial movie Burning Sands, written and directed by Omega Psi Phi member Gerard McMurray about the underground pledge process of Black Greek Letter Organizations (BLGOs). The violence displayed in the movie was at times over-the-top and in many scenes hard to watch, as […]
Parents Outraged After Students Asked To Make Slavery Auction Posters
What’s so appealing about slavery that half-baked imitations of it keep appearing in our schools? Initially, the problem came up whenever a mostly white high school or a white HBCU professor held mock slave auctions. Now, an elementary school in New Jersey is dealing with the backlash of thinking it was a good idea to […]
Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, And The Normalization of Slave Rape Narratives
I am not the same person now as I was when I was 14—and thank God for that. I was remarkably naive and unbearably insecure, and stuck in an environment that did nothing but exacerbate those complex internal struggles that are so typical of adolescence. So imagine my outrage upon being continuously confronted with articles […]
The last faces of American slavery: Stunning pictures of men and women who were born into slavery
The following piece is from Daily Mail. It was written by Beth Stebner. By: Beth Stebner In the 1920s and 1930s, an interest in slave narratives was rekindled, and as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Progress Administration, more than 2,000 first-person accounts of slavery were collected, as well as […]
Feature: The Worth of Black Men, From Slavery to Ferguson
The following piece is from the New York Times. It was written by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. By: Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts The paper, stained in spots, has yellowed, its black ink faded to a dull brown, but the horizontal lines printed on the page are still a fine blue. Some scribe took great care preparing this page, […]
149 years ago today, Juneteenth was born
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger delivered news that the war had ended in Galveston, Texas.
Still Slaves
I remember sitting in the courtroom for my cousins hearing. It was him and 4 other young men, who were all sitting in khaki colored prison jumpsuits with handcuffs and chains shackled from their hands all the way down to their feet. The scene became all too reminiscent of the images of young enslaved Africans […]
New Slaves: The Battle against Colorism and Self-Hatred
I’m sure you have probably heard the to-do surrounding two rising starlets, Lupita Nyong’o and Dencia. Both African women, it seems at first glance that their beef is escalating rapidly. After more thorough investigation, it just seems that maybe someone has been drinking that good ole Haterade. And man, it has to be sour.
New York Times prints Northup correction 161 years later
161 years after its mistake, the New York Times has printed a correction for misspelling the name of a black man sold into slavery. Solomon Northup, a free slave tricked into slavery is the man who the Oscar-winning film “12 Years a Slave” is based on.
12 YAS? 12 No.
I had no plans to see 12 Years a Slave; I had decided against it. I really thought that the plan was to see some romantic comedy about awkward white people. The name of that film, now, escapes me. But when I got to the theater, by no decision of my own, I ended up […]