Category: History

  • A Single Migration From Africa Populated the World, Studies Find The New York Times 2016-09-21 Carl Zimmer The KhoiSan, hunter-gatherers living today in southern Africa, above, are among hundreds of indigenous people whose genetic makeup has provided new clues to human prehistory. Credit: Eric Laforgue/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images Modern humans evolved in Africa roughly 200,000…

  • Obama: African-American museum helps tell fuller story of America Cable News Network (CNN) 2016-09-24 Eugene Scott, Politics Reporter Suzanne Malveaux, National correspondent Kevin Bohn, Supervising Producer Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama said Saturday that the new Smithsonian museum devoted to African-American history elevates the often-overlooked impact of black Americans and will help others better understand…

  • The untold stories of Japanese war brides The Washington Post 2016-09-22 Kathryn Tolbert, Deputy Editor Hiroko and Bill with Kathy, left, Sam and Susan. The video is the trailer to a short documentary film, “Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides,” which features Hiroko and two other war brides. They married the…

  • In the midst of a nineteenth-century boom in spiritual experimentation, the Cercle Harmonique, a remarkable group of African-descended men, practiced Spiritualism in heavily Catholic New Orleans from just before the Civil War to the end of Reconstruction.

  • CFP: Deadline approaching – Race, Sex, and Reproduction in the Global South, c.1800-2000 workshop Humanities and Social Sciences Online 2016-09-12 Chiara Beccalossi Reminder – Proposals for the Race, Sex, and Reproduction in the Global South, c.1800-2000 workshop are due on 25 September 2016. Call for papers: Workshop: Race and Ethnicity in the Global South and the Sydney…

  • Historic recognition: Washington’s family tree is biracial U.S. News & World Report 2016-09-17 Matthew Barakat, Northern Virginia Correspondent The Associated Press ZSun-nee Miller-Matema poses for a portrait at Mount Vernon, the plantation home of former U.S. President George Washington, in Alexandria, Va., on Monday, July 18, 2016. Miller-Matema is a descendent of Caroline Branham, one…

  • The Strange and Ironic Fates of Jefferson’s Daughters The Daily Beast 2016-09-17 Sally Cabot Gunning Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast Martha Jefferson was Virginia elite. Her half-sister Harriet, though seven-eighths white, was deemed a slave at birth. No one could have predicted their fates. Martha Jefferson was born in 1772, just as Monticello…

  • Trying to remedy racism on its own intellectual terrain is like trying to extinguish a fire by striking another match. The fiction must be unbelieved, the fire stamped out.

  • American Segregation Started Long Before the Civil War What It Means to Be American: A National Conversation Hosted by The Smithsonian’s and Zócalo Public Square 2016-09-12 Nicholas Guyatt, University Lecturer in American History Cambridge University How the Founders’ Revolutionary Ideology Laid the Groundwork Segregation remains an intractable force in American life, more than 60 years…

  • The love story that shocked the world BBC News 2016-09-14 When an African prince and a white middle-class clerk from Lloyd’s underwriters got married in 1948, it provoked shock in Britain and Africa. Seretse Khama met Ruth Williams while he was a student at Oxford University. After his studies, he was supposed to go home…