The first permanent English settlement in the North Americas was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Several scholars have noted that when the first slave ships arrived in Jamestown in 1619, black people served no differently than white bondservants and, consequently, the markers of slavery were not immediately linked to a bodily difference. Further, the word slave initially held no meaning in the English legal system; black subjects were regarded merely as servants.
Read moreA Brief History of Transatlantic Slavery
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries enslaved men, women, and children were culled from West African ethnocultural communities of the Wolof, Mandingo, Mende and Yoruba. In his examination of Africa before the transatlantic slave trade John Thornton points out that there existed a bustling economic exchange between Africa and Europe.
Read moreWomen's History Month: The "New Negro Woman" in the 1920s
Between 1900 and 1930 blacks in North America were venturing into new territories in terms of migration, education, employment, and the arts. The United States witnessed a massive internal migration of African Americans out of the South and into northern cities; in particular, New York and Chicago grew exponentially.
Read moreThoughts on Taraji P. Henson and Self-Worth
As a Black woman academic, I’ve never been paid what I know I am worth, and that’s compared to faculty of my rank — I’ve checked and that math ain’t mathing. But there are few faculty of my rank at any school who can write the way I do, give lectures the way that I do, and just make this work look as easy as I do, even though it is not easy at all.
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