They were once America’s cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names? Isaac Franklin and John Armfield committed atrocities they appeared to relish Photo: The exterior of the Franklin and Armfield Slave Office, today the Freedom House Museum, in Alexandria. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post ) (The Washington Post) The two most [...]
The Battle to Rewrite Texas History While a new generation of scholars is correcting the historical record, supporters of the traditional narratives are fighting to keep their grip on the public imagination. Illustration by David Palumbo (Texas Monthly) On the mild, cloudy day of April 14, 2015, exactly 150 years and five days after [...]
In rural Texas, black students’ fight for voting access conjures a painful past Photo: Even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the ratification six years later of the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18, Prairie View students faced barriers, including a “residency questionnaire” in the 1970s and [...]
A Secret 1950s Strategy to Keep Out Black Students Long-hidden documents reveal the University of Texas’s blueprint for slowing integration during the civil-rights era. Photo: Heman Sweatt (right) at the University of Texas (Joseph Scherschel / Getty) (The Atlantic) In the summer of 1955, administrators at the University of Texas at Austin had a [...]
Restoring Black Cowboys to the Range At the Black Cowboy Museum in a storefront near Houston, one man celebrates the lives of African-Americans in the West’s most iconic role. Photo: Mr. Callies used his life savings to open the museum in 2017. (Credit: Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York Times) (New York Times) [...]
Given the infinite nature of the Universe, four hundred years is merely a blink of the eye. But the human existence is not infinite. We understand that from the moment we take our first breath out of our mothers’ wombs, our journey begins towards that moment when we take our last breath. So, for us [...]
Harris County Takes Steps To Face A History Of Racial Lynchings A national movement to commemorate lynching victims could come to the Houston area and recognize four black men who were killed here. Photo: Located at 1115 Congress Street, Quebedeaux Park -- proposed site for lynching markers -- sits right across from the Harris [...]
The Thorny History of Reparations in the United States In the 20th century, the country issued reparations for Japanese American internment, Native land seizures, massacres and police brutality. Will slavery be next? Photo: President Harry S. Truman signing a bill providing for the establishment of the Indian Claims Commission. (Thomas D. Mcavoy/The LIFE Picture [...]
Her Fight for Civil Rights Was Recognized During the March on Washington's Tribute to Women—But She Wasn't Actually There Photo: Gloria Richardson, left, a leader in the Cambridge, Md., integrationist's movement, Dr. Rosa L. Gragg of the National Association of Colored Woman's Clubs and Mrs. Diane Nash Bevel, right, representing the Southern Christian Leadership [...]
The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery. Photo: Children on a Louisiana sugar-cane plantation around 1885. (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library) (The New York Times) Sugar has been linked in the United States to diabetes, obesity and [...]
