Black History

History Has a Way of Making Me Uneasy When I look at the political climate today, I keep finding myself pulled backward into American history. The name that keeps coming to mind is Andrew Johnson. Johnson became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865. At the time, millions of formerly enslaved Black people

The Great Depression Was Not One Single American Experience The standard story of the 1930s usually begins with collapse. We hear about the stock market crash, failing banks, soup kitchens, Dust Bowl farms, Hoovervilles, unemployment, and families standing in bread lines. Those images are real, and the suffering was enormous. But the problem comes when

The Question Michael’s Story Leaves With Me Michael Jackson’s story makes me sit with a hard question about love, sacrifice, ambition, and the price people sometimes pay for greatness. What if love is not proven only by how softly we hold somebody, but also by what we are willing to sacrifice for their future? That

When I Heard There Were African Popes When I first heard somebody say that three African men once led the Catholic Church, I had to stop and think about what I had been taught about early Christianity. Most images of early Christianity make the faith appear almost entirely European, as if it moved directly from

A Story Worth Looking Beneath When I first heard the debate about Quinta Brunson possibly developing and starring in a Betty Boop movie, I was not surprised by the reaction. The discussion quickly brought the story of Baby Esther back into the spotlight. I understood why people wanted to take another look at the history

When the Story Begins in Chains One thing that has troubled me about the way Black history is often presented is where somebody chooses to begin the story. Too many lessons seem to introduce Black people when Europeans are putting Africans on slave ships or when enslaved people are already standing in American fields. We

The Man Who Attacked Slavery Without Loving Black People One of the strangest arguments against American slavery came from a white Southerner who certainly was no friend of Black people. His name was Hinton Rowan Helper, and he was born in North Carolina in 1829. In 1857, he published The Impending Crisis of the South:

Remembering Africa Before the Wound When I think about Africa, I refuse to begin the story with chains, slave ships, and somebody else’s idea of what Black people were supposed to be. Africa had civilizations, governments, trade networks, mathematics, architecture, medicine, religion, philosophy, agriculture, and scholarship long before the modern Atlantic world existed. Ancient Egypt