African-American History

Dr. Jackson, professor and chair of the anthropology department at the University of South Florida, was honored for her work to recover and restore Black cemeteries. As founder and director of the Black Cemetery Network, she has been able to retrieve a rich but forgotten history of Black cemeteries as an integral part of Black life in the United States.

Historical materials collected by scholars from Clark Atlanta University, Florida A&M University, Jackson State University, Texas Southern University, and Tuskegee University are featured in a new exhibition at Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

“Rosa Parks had a long life of activism, before and after her famous protest of segregated buses in Montgomery,” said Lerone Martin, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor at Stanford University. “These photos show us Rosa Parks as the trained, deliberate, intelligent activist who was a part of the backbone of the Black freedom struggle.”

Born in West Africa in 1753 and brought on a slave ship to Boston, Phillis Wheatley was educated in the household of her enslaver, John Wheatley. After she was freed from slavery in 1773, she published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, making her the first author of African descent in the American colonies to publish a book.

First appearing in 1892, the boll weevil destroyed much of the country's cotton crops by 1922, affecting a significant portion of Black farmers. A new study has found this agricultural shock, which caused many Black fathers to migrate to other areas or change their occupation, may have led to long-term economic benefits for Black sons born after the boll weevil first appeared.

The Frederick Douglass Book Prize is presented annually by Yale University in honor of the preceding year's best book on topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition. Dr. Edwards, associate professor at the University of Virginia, was honored for her latest book, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank (W.W. Norton and Company, 2024).

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education

First established as a bachelor's degree program in 1969, the African American studies department at Yale University has been renamed to the Black Studies Department to reflect the growing number of new professors who study the African diaspora beyond the United States.

W. Wilson Goode served as Philadelphia's first Black mayor for two terms from 1984 to 1992. In addition to his public service, he is the founder of Amachi Inc, a national support program for children with incarcerated parents.

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

Under Assembly Bill 7, California-based colleges and universities could provide admissions preferences to applicants of any racial background who can prove they are descended from someone who was enslaved in the United States prior to 1900. The bill is currently awaiting final approval from Governor Gavin Newsom.

McNeil was a member of the A&T Four - a group of four students at North Carolina A&T State University who organized a sit-in protest at a local lunch counter. The movement lasted for more than five months, ultimately leading to the store's desegregation.

“This history is not easy to grapple with, but it is part — very much part — of American history,” said Margaret Burnham, university distinguished professor at Northeastern University. “So we do this, not only because for those who are affected and who are still alive it is of enormous importance, but we also do this as scholars. Our job is to lift up, render visible history — important histories.”

In the years immediately following the Civil War, many Black Americans gained access to education for the first time. Although many of these new opportunities were systemically dismantled by the end of Reconstruction, Black children who were exposed to these brief educational benefits had better economic opportunities in adulthood, and passed those benefits on to their children.

A group of students at the University of California, Davis have found records of an African American community in California established by formerly enslaved people who were first brought to the state by their enslavers in the mid-1800s.

“Our hope is that this policy agenda will serve as a rallying point to increase momentum for positive, holistic change,” write the authors of the report from the Congressional Black Caucus and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “These challenges are not new, and we remain resolute and hopeful that change can and will be achieved.”

For the past four years, Dr. Ed Baptist at Cornell University has led a project dedicated to collecting and digitizing tens of thousands of advertisements listed before 1865 by slaveowners seeking to locate runaway slaves. Now, the National Endowment for the Humanities has issued a stop-work order on the project, preventing Dr. Baptist and his team from preserving an important piece of U.S. history.

A former Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Eaton studies African American literary and cultural history in the American West, women’s narratives, and Africana studies. She currently teaches as a professor of African and African American studies at the University of Oklahoma.

The John Winthrop House at Harvard University is named after two John Winthrops, both thought to be slaveowners. Following student demands and two years of review, a committee has agreed to drop "John" from the house's title, but "could not agree that the overall legacy of these two men demanded removing their names from the house."