Back in July 1962 I was in the Deep South, working to register Black voters. It was a near-hopeless project, given the mass disenfranchisement of the region’s Black population that was enforced by Southern law and an occasional dose of white terrorism. [Read more…] about Memories of Voter Suppression
Black History
Masters and Management: The Business of Slavery
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We live in an age where big businesses track our shopping habits and in some cases our work habits. But is the age of data new? When did the “age of the spreadsheet” and quantification of habits develop?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History, Caitlin Rosenthal, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Harvard University Press, 2019), leads us on an investigation into the origins of how American businesses came to collect and use data to manage their workers and their pursuit of profits.
[Read more…] about Masters and Management: The Business of Slavery
Marcus Garvey In Harlem: Roots of African Independence
Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican-born printer who as a young man became keenly aware of the severe discrimination against Black people, particularly dark skinned people, internationally.
He later moved to London where he met several Black Nationalists seeking to end white European colonialism in Africa.
At a library in London he read Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery in which Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, urged that African-Americans pull themselves up and establish black institutions, over seeking equal rights through integration. [Read more…] about Marcus Garvey In Harlem: Roots of African Independence
Baseball’s Satchel Paige on Long Island
By 1950, Satchel Paige was a star of the Negro Leagues and a World Series winner with the Cleveland Indians. He spent most of that year barnstorming across the United States which is what brought him to Riverhead Stadium on Long Island.
In this episode of the Long Island History Project, librarian and historian Fabio Montella relates his research into Satchel, Riverhead, and the deeper connections between Long Island and Negro League baseball. [Read more…] about Baseball’s Satchel Paige on Long Island
Sag Harbor’s Historically African American Vacation Community
The Preservation League of New York State has announced a virtual presentation set for Thursday, August 27th, looking at the historically African American vacation community of Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest & Ninevah Subdivions (SANS), its place in the context of other historically African American beach communities, what their unique challenges are, and what is being done to protect them. [Read more…] about Sag Harbor’s Historically African American Vacation Community
Black Builder Jacob Wynkoop Exhibit Goes Online
Jacob Wynkoop was born in New Paltz, New York, in 1829, the child of two former slaves, Thomas and Jane Deyo Wynkoop. Wynkoop had an exceptional and varied life for any man of his time.
Among the first African Americans to buy land in the community, he also served in the Union Army during the Civil War, organized politically on behalf of African American citizens in town, and built a series of homes that today still define a neighborhood in the village of New Paltz. [Read more…] about Black Builder Jacob Wynkoop Exhibit Goes Online
Latest US Colored Troops Civil War Digest Issued
For more than two decades, the US Colored Troops Civil War Digest has been published with the support of Hartwick College and the membership of the United States Colored Troops Institute for Local History and Family Research (USCTI).
[Read more…] about Latest US Colored Troops Civil War Digest Issued
African Americans At The Battle of Bennington
The Fraunces Tavern Museum has announced an illustrated virtual talk, The Black Presence at the Battle of Bennington, presented by Phil Holland, set for Thursday, August 20th. [Read more…] about African Americans At The Battle of Bennington
Anna Murray-Douglass: Frederick’s Most Important Ally
I offer the following tribute to Anna Douglass, first wife of Frederick Douglass and mother of their five children, on the anniversary of her death Aug. 4, 1882:
Both Frederick Bailey and Anna Murray were born in rural Maryland in the early 1800s and grew up under harsh racist customs that strictly defined roles for men and women by sex, race and class.
By the time Frederick and Anna met in the 1830s in Baltimore, his owner valued him as a slave who was a skilled caulker. Yet Anna, despite being a free woman skilled as a domestic and cook, was not well paid by her white employers. [Read more…] about Anna Murray-Douglass: Frederick’s Most Important Ally
Real Estate, Philip Payton And The Rise of Black Harlem
The Underground Railroad Coalition recently announced a major effort to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the New York State constitutional provision that ended slavery in the State on July 4, 1827.
The emancipation provision in the New York State Constitution of 1799 provided for the gradual elimination of slavery in New York, but it did not end the widespread legal race discrimination in the state. The most glaring example of this was the New York State Constitution of 1821, which eliminated property qualifications to vote for white men, but denied black men owning less than $250 worth of property the right to vote. [Read more…] about Real Estate, Philip Payton And The Rise of Black Harlem