The Brutal History That France Prefers to Ignore Is Being Heard at Last

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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May 25, 2026

Andrew S. Curran, The New York Times

In May 2025, François Bayrou, then the prime minister of France, fielded an unusual question from a member of Parliament: Why hadn’t France formally revoked the Code Noir, the notorious set of laws that had been used to enforce slavery in French colonies? It would be safe to assume that Mr. Bayrou didn’t see that question coming; few people understood that the laws were still on the books. Visibly surprised, he announced that a bill to abolish the Code would be brought before Parliament and, he hoped, passed unanimously. After his government fell the Code seemed destined to endure.

Now, a year later, a cross-party bill written by Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker from Guadeloupe, will come before the National Assembly on May 28 to formally annul the slave laws — 341 years after King Louis XIV signed them into existence.

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