*The Oneida Institute opening is celebrated on this date in 1827. They were a short-lived (16 years) but highly influential school that was a national leader in the (then) emerging anti-slavery movement. It was founded by George Washington Gale as the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry. His former teacher (in the Addison County Grammar School, Middlebury, John Frost, now a Presbyterian minister in […]
learn moreCharmaine Jefferson, attorney, retired ballerina and former director of the California African American Museum shares the meaning of her interaction with Nelson Mandela
learn more*Virginia, the first of America’s 13 colonies was chartered on this date in 1606. This article briefly describes the settlers, self-described as the First Families of Virginia (FFV). These were white-American planters and slave holders in Colonial Virginia who were socially prominent and wealthy. Though Sir Walter Raleigh did not settle there, other families descended from England and settled at Jamestown, Williamsburg, The […]
learn more*On this date in 1911, the first “Universal Races Congress” assembled. This four-day conference at the University of London was a 20th century global effort against racism. Speakers from a number of countries discussed race relations and how to improve them. The congress, with 2,100 attendees, was organized by prominent humanists of that era; it was conceived of a result of comments in 1906 […]
learn more*On this date in 1912, we celebrate the publication of African Times and Orient Review. This was a Pan-Asian and Pan-African journal. Launched by Duse Mohamed Ali, a black British actor and journalist, with the help of John Eldred Taylor. It was inspired by the first Universal Races Congress in 1911 in the United Kingdom and wrote of the global intersectionality of non white communities. That […]
learn more*November is Native American history month and the birth of Chief Billy Bowlegs in c. 1810, is celebrated on this date. He was a Native American leader of the Seminoles and slave owner of Africans in Florida during the Second and Third Seminole Wars against the United States. Bowlegs was born into a family of hereditary chiefs descended from Cowkeeper of the Oconee tribe of the Seminole in the […]
learn more*On this date in 1851 Sojourner Truth gave her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech for the first time. Though it did not originally have a title and was delivered impromptu, it has been an inspiration within the black feminists’ community since. Sometime after gaining her freedom in 1827, Sojourner Truth became a well-known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech […]
learn more*On this date in 1876, the American national election results brought in the illegal use of the Poll Tax in the United States. Historically, Poll taxes had been a major source of government funding among the colonies which formed the United States. Poll taxes made up from one-third to one-half of the tax revenue of colonial Massachusetts. Various privileges […]
learn more*On this date in 1927, Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 was ruled on by the Supreme Court. This episode followed the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and channeled race into an unmonitored deciding factor of sterilization in America. Buck v. Bell was the United States Supreme Court ruling that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, “for the protection and health […]
learn more*On this date in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted. Approved on, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments it is one of the most important American amendments to the present day, the amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The […]
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