history
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Mary Bowser: A Brave Black Spy in the Confederate White House
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, The Root is spotlighting less famous figures from the African American National Biography, whose stories exemplify the extraordinary, and often unsung, accomplishments of African-American women from our past. In modern wars, including the Civil War, women have taken on key assignments at the heart of the action as soldiers or nurses or performed supportive…
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Some Brotherly Love for Clergyman and Freemason Absalom Jones
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Among the multitude of tributes made to the renowned African-American clergyman Absalom Jones, few capture his life and times in…
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The 1st Successful American-Born Magician Was a Black Man
Who was America’s first successful stage magician? He swallowed swords and molten lead. He danced on eggs without cracking their shells. He threw knives; he threw his voice. He was Richard Potter, the first American-born stage magician and ventriloquist, black or white. Prior to Potter’s career in the early 19th century, the performance of magic…
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How Do I Find Slaves Living on a Plantation During the Revolutionary War?
I am working on a research project for the Spartanburg County Historical Association. The directors at Walnut Grove Plantation in Moore, S.C., have never researched the descendants of the slaves who lived at Walnut Grove Plantation during the American Revolutionary War. They know plenty about the Moore and Barry families, but not about the slaves. We…
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A Cane River Tale: From Slave to Free Woman to Slave Owner
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, The Root is spotlighting less famous figures from the African American National Biography, whose stories exemplify the extraordinary, and often unsung, accomplishments of African-American women from our past. Regular readers of The Root are likely familiar with the fact that a small number of African Americans owned slaves, from the earliest days…
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This Marble Black Acrobat Is More Than Just a Simple Ornament
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Among the most original treasures of the British Museum, a marble figure of a young black acrobat performs the daring…
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The Contradictions of #Selma50
My pilgrimage to Selma, Ala., began at 2:30 Saturday morning. After loading up my tiny rental car, I traveled five-and-a-half hours on zero sleep to be among the number of people bearing witness to the commemoration of one of the most bloody, transformative events in civil rights history. Fifteen miles outside town, I stopped at…
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What a Slave-Reparations Claim Has to Do With Harvard Law School
Who was the first person to ask for reparations for slavery? In America the concept of reparations for slavery is generally thought to have originated during the Civil War era, with the failed promise of 40 acres and a mule. But it actually dates back to Revolutionary America, when a former slave named Belinda went…
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Selma’s Heroic Marchers Remember ‘Bloody Sunday’ of 1965
The images are iconic: the horses, the tear gas, the billy clubs and bloodied bodies. It was March 7, 1965, when ordinary, working-class citizens were brutally attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by Alabama law enforcement during a march from Selma to the state Capitol in Montgomery in support of voting rights. The violent assault…
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5 Things You Should Know About Selma
On Saturday, thousands—including President Barack Obama—will descend on the tiny town of Selma, Ala., to mark the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march so vividly depicted in the film directed by Ava DuVernay. The march—the first of three attempts that would ultimately end at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery—became a key moment in…