Black History

Two Images of the Same Uniform When most Americans think about firefighters, they think about courage and sacrifice. We picture them running into burning buildings to save lives while everyone else is trying to get out. We remember September 11 and those firefighters climbing the stairs of the World Trade Center while frightened people were

What Happened After Greenwood Burned When we talk about Tulsa’s Greenwood District, the story should not end with the flames of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Lives were taken, homes were destroyed, businesses disappeared, and generations of wealth were damaged. But something else happened that deserves just as much attention. Black folks started rebuilding Greenwood

More Than a Name The debate over whether descendants of enslaved Black Americans should call ourselves African American reaches deeper than a name. I understand why some Black folks question the label when we cannot point to a particular African village, family, or ethnic group and say with certainty, “That is where my people came

Before Sidney Poitier Before Sidney Poitier became the Black leading man most of America remembers, James Edwards was already pushing against Hollywood’s racial boundaries. Edwards came along in the late 1940s, when Black actors were still commonly cast as servants, porters, entertainers, or comic relief. He brought something different to the screen because he could

The Death of a Visionary When John H. Johnson died on August 8, 2005, at eighty-seven, Black America lost more than a successful businessman. We lost a man who had spent more than sixty years proving that Black stories, Black consumers, and Black achievement mattered. Through Ebony and Jet, Johnson Publishing Company became one of

Four Years of Silence Benjamin O. Davis Jr. entered West Point in 1932 with a dream of becoming a military pilot. As a young Black man, he already understood that talent alone would not protect him from racism. His father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., was one of the few Black officers serving in the Army.

A Few Minutes After Midnight A few minutes after midnight on June 12, 1963, Medgar Wiley Evers pulled into the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. He had spent another long day doing civil rights work in a state where demanding simple fairness could get a Black man killed. Only hours earlier, President John

A Phrase We Say Without Knowing the Weight When somebody says they were “sold down the river,” most of us understand immediately that they mean somebody betrayed them, sacrificed them, or left them hanging to protect themselves. A worker might say it after a supervisor places the blame for a company mistake on them. A