Black History

A Strong People Must Be Strong Everywhere The words attributed to the Honorable Marcus Garvey that a strong man should be strong everywhere carry a message much larger than one individual. When I think about that idea, I hear a challenge concerning the condition of African people wherever we happen to live. Garvey’s Pan-African vision

Before Sarah Neely’s Story Can Be Told Before I tell you what happened to Sarah Neely, a Black woman caught inside a system that claimed to recognize her freedom, I need to give you some historical context. That context is crucial because her story makes little sense unless we first understand how the law worked

A Summons She Did Not Expect In 1939, Jane Matilda Bolin was a 31-year-old Black attorney building her career in New York City. One day, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia summoned her to meet him at the New York World’s Fair. She reportedly had no idea why the mayor wanted to see her. Bolin was concerned

A Story That Refused to Die There is a story Black people have carried for generations about Africans who could fly. Not flying as a simple figure of speech, but rising from the ground and returning across the water to Africa. Versions of this story appear in different parts of the African diaspora. The details

When Anger Becomes a Question There are moments when Black Americans see another violent death, another disturbing attack, or another court decision and ask how much more we are expected to take. That frustration did not begin yesterday. Our history contains too many examples of racial violence for a new incident to exist completely by

A Word I Thought I Already Knew For most of my life, if somebody said the word bulldozer, I pictured a large piece of construction equipment. I saw a heavy tractor with a broad steel blade pushing dirt, rocks, trees, and almost anything else standing in its way. The meaning seemed obvious. A bulldozer was