Breaking News! History in the Making
Whitelash and Blacklash
By Sharon Leslie Morgan and Thomas Norman DeWolf, Beacon Broadside [Editor’s note: Normally we excerpt articles, posting only a portion and including a link back to the original article. This time, however, because many visitors to ABHM are struggling to make sense of the election and what to do now, we have decided to post…
Attorney General Loretta Lynch: You Must Continue To Report Hate Crimes
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is urging Americans to report any hate crimes they witness to both their local law enforcement and the Justice Department.
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Research says calling people racist doesn’t reduce racial bias
Researchers stumbled on a radical tactic for reducing another person’s bigotry: a frank, brief conversation. The key to these conversations, though, is empathy. And it will take a lot of empathy — not just for one conversation but many, many conversations in several settings over possibly many years. It won’t be easy, but if we want to address some people’s deeply entrenched racial attitudes, it may be the only way.
Sherman Park youth earn stipend for cleaning up neighborhood
Program the Parks, a grassroots Sherman Park youth initiative started early last summer to train and employ young people ages 12 to 25 to help youth learn leadership and employment skills and earn money.
The KKK Is Working To Get Out The Vote — For Donald Trump, Of Course
Within a week of the election, the KKK steps up its efforts to elect Trump president by leafleting neighborhoods in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Louisiana and advertising their endorsements through David Duke’s Senate campaign and their own newspapers.
Chicago’s Grim Era of Police Torture
The Chicago Torture Archive, an online research repository set to open early next year, provides a chilling insight into the grisly period from the 1970s to the 1990s when the Chicago Police Department’s infamous torture crew rounded up more than 100 African-American men who were shocked with cattle prods, beaten with telephone books and suffocated with plastic bags until many confessed to crimes.
“Always In Season” Film on Lynching and Restoration to Screen in Milwaukee
Always in Season is a feature-length documentary film that shows the impact of past and current racial terrorism on our country today through the stories of four communities affected by lynchings. Screening at ABHM’s 2017 Founder’s Day Gathering for Racial Repair and Reconciliation will be followed by a Q & A and small group discussions with representatives from groups around the country who are healing through commemorations of lynchings and other forms of racial terrorism.
Dr. Cameron’s Memoir To Be Presented at SE Wisconsin Festival of Books 11/4/16
Where to hear a talk about and get copies of the greatly expanded and awardwinning 3rd edition of A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story by lynching survivor James Cameron.
Hundreds Dedicate Lynching Marker to Anthony Crawford in Abbeville, South Carolina
A century ago, a white mob beat, stabbed, shot, and hung Mr. Crawford, a 56-year-old black farmer, in the Abbeville town square, after he dared to argue with a white merchant over the price of cottonseed. The patriarch of a large, multi-generational family, and the owner of 427 acres of land, Mr. Crawford was a successful farmer and leader whose murder had long-reaching effects. In October 2016, hundreds gathered in Abbeville for a Freedom School, during which college students, activists, and leaders led discussions about our country’s history of racial injustice and its contemporary legacies. Those present included more than 100 of Anthony Crawford’s descendants, who wore black armbands and buttons in his memory, as well as members of the families of Emmett Till, Ida B. Wells, and Malcolm X, who came to lend support and words of encouragement.
After 100 Years Of Challenges, The 1st Nat’l Black History Museum Is Here
Black history has finally taking its rightful place within the Smithsonian Institution with the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s grand opening in September 2016. Discover the 100-year history of the project, take a virtual tour, watch the full dedication ceremony and video interviews.
Restoring Black History
Celebrated historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explains the historical significance of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, a project 100 years in the making, opening September 2016 on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Upcoming Film Festivals Featuring Black Filmmakers’ Movies
Below are the dates and sites of upcoming film festivals around the country and samples of the movies by and about African Americans that you can expect to see there: Service To Man won the American Black Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize in Miami in June 2016. It will screen this weekend in both the…
Our Museum’s Response to Milwaukee’s Recent Unrest
Because America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, visitors to ABHM online have inquired about our response to the recent unrest in a predominantly black neighborhood in our city. Though not immediately apparent on the ABHM website, our museum’s principal spokesperson has been helping local, national, and international press explain these events…
Efforts by Counties and Towns to Purge Minority Voters From Rolls
Sparta, Georgia, is purging its voter rolls of African Americans. Before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court, this is precisely the sort of electoral maneuver that once would have needed Justice Department approval before it could be put in effect. And this is but one of many places in the USA where such seemingly small but effective efforts at voter suppression are taking place ahead of November’s presidential election.
Federal Court Strikes Down NC Voter ID Requirement
A federal appeals court decisively struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law on Friday, saying its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls. Much of Wisconsin’s voter identification law was also struck down.
White allies show solidarity with Black Lives Matter
In the wake of the recent police killings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, public opinion, particularly among white people, has started to shift. Forty new chapters of a national network of groups and individuals organizing white people for racial justice –– Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) –– have formed in the weeks since the incidents.
It’s Time to Ring the Alarm About White Nationalism
The media reports on Islamic terrorism and individual ambushes of police, but it has largely overlooked increasingly brazen demonstrations and violence by the Far Right, treating each as a separate unconnected episode. But are they? In the last year, the level of violence has ramped up dramatically.
212 Slaves Died on the São José Ship; National Museum Shares Their Story
The first items recovered from the sunken slave ship have arrived in Washington, D.C., and will be displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. By Allison Keyes, theRoot.com Paul Gardullo lifted an iron ballast from a Portuguese slave ship that sank in 1794 out of a crate Wednesday morning and…
U.S. spending on prisons grew at three times rate of school spending: report
U.S. state and local spending on prisons and jails grew at three times the rate of spending on schools over the last 33 years as the number of Americans behind bars ballooned under a spate of harsh sentencing laws
In the Turmoil Over Race and Policing, Children Pay a Steep Emotional Price
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR, New York Times In the past week alone, there was the 4-year-old girl in Falcon Heights, Minn., who was captured on video consoling her mother after they watched a police officer shoot the mother’s boyfriend through the window of a car. And there was the 15-year-old boy in Baton Rouge, La., who sobbed uncontrollably in…
Study Supports Suspicion That Police Are More Likely to Use Force on Blacks
A new study has found that the race of the person being stopped by police officers is significant in terms of how much force is used. The study of thousands of use-of-force episodes from police departments across the nation has concluded what many people have long thought, but which could not be proved because of a lack of data: African-Americans are far more likely than whites and other groups to be the victims of use of force by the police, even when racial disparities in crime are taken into account.