Black History

Reparations Should Not Turn Americans Against One Another The reparations debate deserves more than the claim that Black Americans are coming to take White people’s money. It is a public-policy question about whether documented historical harms justify repair and, if so, what form that repair should take. Reasonable people can disagree about eligibility, cost, responsibility,

Dr. King Gave Racism a Warning Label In his 1967 Stanford speech on “The Other America,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. argued that racism was evil because its ultimate logic was genocide. He was not saying every racist thought inevitably leads to mass murder. His warning was about the belief underneath racism: once people are

Justice Has Never Been Completely Blind American history makes it difficult to claim that everyone has always experienced justice equally. The law once protected slavery, Black Codes restricted newly freed Black people, and convict leasing disproportionately forced Black people back into labor after emancipation. That history does not mean every modern case involving a Black

Maybe We Are Asking Too Late Black Americans often ask why our education, talent, population, and buying power have not produced greater ownership in industries shaping American life. It is a legitimate question, but perhaps we should also ask something earlier: What industries are being built right now that we still have time to enter?

A Law From 1871 A law Congress passed 155 years ago has returned to a modern civil-rights dispute. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 emerged during Reconstruction, when newly recognized constitutional rights were being undermined by organized intimidation and racial violence. Black Americans could have rights written into the Constitution while still facing danger

The Woman Who Saw the Problem In 1970s Chicago, sexual-assault evidence was not collected through one consistent system. Martha “Marty” Goddard, a victim advocate, recognized that hospitals, police, and laboratories needed a reliable way to collect, document, preserve, and transfer evidence. Working with medical professionals, law enforcement, attorneys, and survivors, she developed the concept and

The Fastest Man on Earth Bob Hayes became a worldwide sensation at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, winning the 100 meters and helping the United States win the 4×100-meter relay in world-record time. His remarkable anchor leg became part of track history. Within months, Hayes left track for professional football, joining the Dallas Cowboys in 1965.

The History Is Bigger Than We Were Taught Black and Native American history is more connected—and more complicated—than many of us were taught. European artists often portrayed Indigenous people with dark, reddish, or copper-colored skin, but those images were sometimes symbolic representations rather than accurate portraits of particular Native nations. They tell us how Europeans

The House That Tells the Story In 1961, a brick two-flat on Flournoy Street on Chicago’s West Side tells a larger story about housing and race. A speculator bought the house for $12,000 and sold it a few months later to a Black man named Clyde Ross for $27,000. The white family was frightened into