Category: BLACK HISTORY

The Difference Between Slaves and Indentured Servants in Virginia Colony
In defense of his blackface, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam mentioned "indentured servants". The interviewer replied:"Aka slaves." Both were wrong. Slaves were not indentured servants and the terms are not synonyms. Some of the earliest black people in the Virginia Colony were indentured servants, yes, but 40 years later most blacks were enslaved ... Read More

VA Governor Ralph Northam in Blackface: Racist Entertainment in Context
A photo has surfaced of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam in blackface. Dressing up as a caricature of a black man is terrible; when put into historical context -- among the many other forms of racist entertainment and racist pseudoscience -- blackface represents a truly horrendous past ... Read More

Slave-based Economy: Slavery Was the Source of White Real Estate and Power
To discuss race and real estate, we must go back to the beginning of white land use in America, when the South was a slave-based economy ... Read More

Segregation Policies, Redlining and the Present Racial Housing Disparity
Segregation policies, racial covenants and racially biased redlining led to the current racially divided housing situation, the racial housing disparity and the racial asset disparity ... Read More

Racial disparity: Institutional Racism from Black Codes to the Present
Institutional racism didn't end in 1865. The present racial disparity is the result of segregation policies starting with black codes, then Jim Crow; some that lasted well into the 1970s, others that have been created since and are in place today ... Read More

Revisionist History and Slavery as Entertainment at The Black America Show
Nate Salsbury's Slavery Spectacular! Showed off the “Fun-Loving Darky of Old Slavery Days.” Really. So began revisionist history and nostalgia for the antebellum South. ... Read More

White Man Kills Nine Black People in Church Shooting in Charleston S.C.
A young white man has killed nine people in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Several republicans, including some presidential candidates, are saying it wasn't a hate crime ... Read More

The Meridian Race Riot of 1871: The Failure of the Rickety Reconstruction
The Meridian race riot of 1871 illustrates the battles between freedmen and the KKK and other white supremacists in the South during the Reconstruction era ... Read More

The Reconstruction: Federal Army, Carpetbaggers, and Blacks in Office
Then, in 1875, federal army and the carpetbaggers leave, the KKK wins, Black Codes are put in place and the Jim Crow era begins. The Reconstruction is barely even mentioned in history textbooks ... Read More

Slaveholders, Militant Immediatists and Others on the Abolition Spectrum
White Slaveholders, Black slaveholders, gradualists, immediatists, persuasive abolitionists,moral abolitionists and those who wanted all blacks shipped to Liberia -- they covered a broad spectrum of opinions that ranged from pro slavery to unconditional freedom ... Read More

Free People of Color: Before Abolition It Was a Freedom with Qualifications
Before the abolition of slavery, freedom didn't mean the same thing for free people of color as it meant for whites. There were lots of formal and informal restrictions ... Read More