The slaveholding mistress and her purse strings
Stephanie Jones-Rogers dismantles the stereotype of white female passivity in the pre-Civil War south.
Identifying white fragility
Real talk about racism requires getting past knee-jerk reactions.
Why don’t the Gospels describe Jesus’ appearance?
Joan Taylor's top-notch scholarship reads like a detective thriller.
Starting a conversation about anti-blackness
Christians helped create it. Can we help destroy it?
Michael Eric Dyson takes white America to church
Dyson’s sermon on racism is inspiring, but will it speak to those who need to hear it most?
Black critiques matter
Criticism of the slave trade from 200 years ago speaks to us today—and not just about race.
Jesus and the Latter-day Saints
According to some Mormon traditions, God and Jesus have made babies—God with the Heavenly Mother, and Jesus with one of his wives.
Full of emptiness
Emptiness can alternatively mean too little or too much. It is sometimes unclear where emptiness is distinct from excess.
Gateway to Freedom, by Eric Foner
Eric Foner resurrects the history of the Underground Railroad, its powerful place in New York City, and how it helped Harriet Beecher Stowe and others bring about the war that ended slavery.
The ups and downs of Lincoln's legacy
One hundred and fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln died after being shot the night before. That April 15 was the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
How Selma helped me appreciate organ pipes
Sitting beside my best friend, we tensed as policemen clubbed civil rights protesters. We teared up as Martin Luther King Jr. marched alongside James Bevel, as Coretta Scott King talked with Malcolm X, and as the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee strained to relate to their elders. Selma was an experience: visceral, soulful, inspiring, and shocking.
A visual image that struck me was based in sound: microphone before King, organ pipes behind him.
Old prayers for the new year
For this end-of-the-year post, we asked our favorite historians and writers to share prayers from the past that could serve as guides for our present.
Exodus, reparations, and a speech we should remember
Once again, the epic drama of slavery and freedom is upon us. No, I’m not referring to Ferguson, although others have written extensively on links there to the nation’s history of bondage, legal violence, and avoidance of justice. While others protest, this weekend millions of moviegoers will behold Exodus: Gods and Kings. “Let my people go” will square off against law and order. The fish will die; so will the first born males. The Red Sea will separate, for a time, and then its crashing waters will destroy an army.
Exodus has been with Americans since the nation’s birth.
What Twain, Du Bois, and my family each lost
Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. At 7 p.m., thousands of individuals will gently sway lit candles to remember those lost girls and boys.
The day came from one of Ronald Reagan’s last acts as president.
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Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880, by Luke E. Harlow and The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, by David Brion Davis
Why did northern whites support a limited set of rights for blacks during Reconstruction, but then abandon them in the 1870s, and do little to stop the racial violence of the 1880s and beyond? Two new books shed important new light on such questions.