Protest, Image, Black Struggle and Legacy

African American History, American legal system, American politics, slavery

All black progress in the United States has begun with confrontation and resistance. This is a basic fact of American life and the only way to understand the current protest focused on police violence. As the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass put it in 1857, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress….  Power concedes nothing without demand.” Abraham Lincoln reluctantly abolished southern slavery to pressure the Confederacy at the Read More

Symbolic Images

African American History, African Diaspora, ancestors, descendants of slaves, Middle Passage, slavery, transatlantic slave trade

Among people who are part of the Western Hemisphere’s African Diaspora there are certain images that trigger a gut response – the Door of No  Return is one. Viewing a framed image of the ocean, many of us require no description or explanation. In some way we simply know, by instinct almost, that the image is a human memory of separation, departure, loss, immense suffering and sorrow. A raised fist Read More