The version of Texas history I learned in school was woefully incomplete. And according to two historians, this 2016 textbook is too.
No one grows up in Texas without internalizing the myth of our state’s exceptionalism in some way. I say “myth,” but that doesn’t mean that Texas is not, in fact, exceptional. I grew up here, and I’ll never not believe with my whole heart that Texas—even with all its contradictions and hypocrisy—is the best, coolest, toughest, most interesting state in all the USA. But as I got older, it became obvious that the legends upon which this initial belief was built—stories about the Old Three Hundred, the Texas Revolution, and the Republic of Texas that I learned in the state history courses we were required to take in fourth and seventh grade—were watered-down and Anglo-cized. Sometimes they were simply untrue. Read More...
As the U.S. marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, it is a chance to publicly recognize the work of Ida B. Wells and thousands of other African American women who fought fiercely for its passage but did not gain the same benefit as white women after its ratification on Aug. 18, 1920. Read more...
Monuments are under scrutiny throughout the United States. Dozens of contentious statues—including those depicting Christopher Columbus, founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and Confederate soldiers—have been removed by local governments or torn down by protesters since George Floyd’s death in May sparked a national reckoning on race. Read more...
This is the eleventh part of a series where civil rights leaders, cultural influencers, advocates and critical thinkers explain race relations, societal change, community protest and the political awakening happening in the United States following the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and other Black Americans. The group, including NAACP President Derrick Johnson and #OscarsSoWhite Creator April Reign, pose their thoughts on race relations during the summer of 2020 and how America may move forward less divided. Read more...
In a Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate article exploring “How to Transform Black History Education in Schools,” Daina Ramey Berry’s “Lives of the Enslaved,” a Pace–Gilder Lehrman Online MA in American History course, was featured prominently. Read more...
As its name suggests, Beacon Press has had many moments to shine a light into darkness during its 166-year history, from publishing Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning to the Pentagon Papers, which set in motion the downfall of President Richard Nixon. Now, in the wake of the largest civil rights protests since the 1960s, Beacon's works on race and racism in America have been a popular source of information. Read more...
The history of African Americans begins on the African continent where diverse empires thrived for thousands of years and traded gold, ivory and salt with people from other civilizations. But in the majority of classrooms K-12 across the U.S., students learn about the African American heritage starting with the enslavement in the U.S. colonies, a system that erased the identity of the enslaved and treated them as property. Read more...
On June 4, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced that Richmond’s largest Confederate statue will be removed—one among the many statues in honor of the Confederacythat are being taken down in cities across the U.S., as thousands of people nationwide take to the streets to stand up against Read more...
“History is not the past. It is the present.” We have been reflecting on these words by James Baldwin, and they echo particularly strongly these days. It was powerful and poignant to read both A Black Women's History of the United States and Lifting as We Climb in the same year. Read more...
Tributes to a checkered past exist all over the US, even as Confederate statues are removed and brands reconsider racial stereotypes.
In life, the seventh US president, Andrew Jackson, and his family accrued their wealth at the expense of hundreds of enslaved people. Now, even in death, Jackson still wields the power to haunt Black Americans whenever they pull a $20 bill from their wallets.
“Racism isn’t always abrupt. It isn’t always in your face. Sometimes, it’s very insidious,” said Franklin Eugene Forbes II, an architect and urban planner. “Why am I, a Black person, using a bill where a man who believed I was inferior to somebody else as a way to buy things, the same way people that look like me were bought by him?” Read More...
