Black History

Section One: Why History Matters More Than Comfort Many people are angry about where the country is right now, but far fewer are willing to confront how we got here. That reluctance is not accidental; it is protective. Facing origins means admitting that today’s problems are not glitches but features of systems deliberately designed. In […]

Patriotism Without Permission I fought for this country in Vietnam at a time when this country would not fight for me. That fact does not make me defensive, and it does not mean I have something to prove. It simply means my understanding of patriotism was forged under conditions that required faith rather than affirmation.

Why This Conversation Matters Right Now Every single person in America should understand this moment, especially when misinformation is being amplified on major platforms. When public figures with no historical expertise speak about slavery as if it were minor or incidental, the harm is real. It shapes how people understand power, race, and rights today.

The Pen, the Sword, and the Missing Layer Marcus Garvey famously said that the pen is more powerful than the sword, and in many ways that is undeniably true. Ideas outlast violence, and written words travel further than physical force ever could. Laws, movements, and cultural shifts are almost always born on paper before they

A System That Guaranteed Uncertainty The law was presented as a source of order, but for Black people it guaranteed something very different: uncertainty. It offered rules without reliability and procedures without protection. You were told there were rights, yet no remedy when those rights were violated. You were promised trials, but not truth, and

Why Definitions Matter One of the most important things we can do when talking about racism is slow down and define what we actually mean. Too often, people talk past one another because they are using the same word to describe very different things. Racism is not just about personal dislike or bias. It is

The Question No One Was Asked When we talk about sugar plantations, tobacco fields, and the Caribbean, we often focus on labor, profit, and empire. We rarely ask about the human cost beyond physical suffering. No one ever sent mental health professionals to enslaved Africans. There were no counselors after families were torn apart. There

The Word We Use Without Knowing Its Origin The area we now casually call the “ghetto” did not emerge naturally, nor was it the result of cultural failure, it was designed. What makes this history uncomfortable is that public housing, in its earliest form, was not created for poor Black people at all. It was

Rethinking Presentism and Moral Excuses There is a common argument used when judging the past by modern standards, often called presentism. People ask whether the Founders truly opposed slavery and, if they did, why they failed to act decisively against it. The usual defense is that it was a different time and a different place.