black history

Despite Boston's reputation for liberal politics, Blacks living here in the 1800s faced rigid barriers to employment and were often relegated to domestic service and other low-paying menial work.

At the dawn of Christendom, an African general fighting for Rome faced a marauding band of Goths in a narrow river pass in the Swiss Alps.

History is the way that we remember and come to understand past mistakes, so we don’t repeat them. Our American history, our Black history, isn’t always easy to remember. It is filled with oppression, turmoil, hate and self-loathing. But the future is what we make it.

Black history is filled with the names of people who fought against oppression in pursuit of progress.

First-time visitors to the Volunteer State, with its deep wellspring of musical heritage and Black history, will find flavors of both throughout Tennessee, but no place rivals Memphis for its evocation of Black musical traditions and the struggle for equal rights.

Hundreds of dignitaries gathered in front of the State House last week for the rededication of the newly-restored Robert Gould Shaw 54th Massachusetts Regiment memorial.

Deyaha Moussa was a Muslim kidnapped in West Africa, purchased in Saint-Domingue by T.H. Perkins of the eponymous School for the Blind, and who witnessed the Haitian Revolution combust. Perkins’ brother trafficked Moussa to Boston in 1793. He died in 1831 and now rests anonymously in Mattapan under a giant Celtic cross.

Carter G. Woodson, a Black historian, established the concept of Black History Month in 1926. It was originally “Black History Week,” but it was later expanded to the whole month of February. Now, 94 years after Woodson’s idea took hold, it is good to consider its development.

On Jan. 26, the United States Postal Service will honor African American and Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis with a new “forever” stamp.

Free Soil Arts Collective has debuted a book of interviews with Black residents of Lowell. “Hidden in Plain Sight: Stories of Black Lowell,” published Dec. 13, delves into the history of the city that’s often left behind in archives and dialogues.

When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Orders, Number 3 and thus emancipating the slaves of Texas on June 19, 1865, he had no idea that he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “Nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States.