Jim Crow

  • Are We Returning to Jim Crow?

    When Donald Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America great again,” many of us saw it for what it was: coded language for taking the mask—or the hood, as it were—off of white supremacy. Since his inauguration, Trump, and those in his administration, have shown that they mean to make good on their promise to…

  • Jeff Sessions Is the New Jim Crow

    Perhaps the worst thing about America’s mistreatment of black people in this country has nothing to do with the violence inflicted against us or the centuries of historic subjugation we’ve endured. It is the constant disregard for our voices that frustrates us most. Black America is the neighbor in the horror movie who warns the…

  • Henry Louis Gates Jr. on 50 Years of Black Progress and the Perils That Still Exist

    “I now know what Frederick Douglass felt like in 1876 when Reconstruction came to an end,” says Henry Louis Gates Jr., referring to the recent election and the end of the Obama presidency. He continues, “This clearly for some people is the end of the Second Reconstruction.” The renowned professor and documentarian (and chairman of…

  • Former Tuskegee Airman Audley Coulthurst Dies at Age 92

    Another former member of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen has died. Audley Coulthurst passed away Thursday at a Veterans Affairs facility in Brooklyn, N.Y., after suffering cardiac arrest, his daughter, Audra Coulthurst, said, the Associated Press reports. He was 92. According to the report, Coulthurst enlisted in the Army in 1942, ultimately becoming one of the…

  • Who Killed Black Wall Street?

    Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. (The Root) — Amazing Fact about the…

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    Greenwood, Okla.: The Legacy of the Tulsa Race Riot

    Editor’s note: Here’s the story of a sad chapter of American history, pulled from The Root’s archives. J.B. Stradford, the son of a freed Kentucky slave, rose to prominence in Oklahoma during the early 1900s as one of the key developers of the all-black Tulsa enclave Greenwood. A lawyer and businessman, Stradford owned the 65-room…