Native American History: Isobel de Olvera
This Native American History Month I propose we celebrate Isobel de Olvera, a Native American who also had African ancestors. She was a single, free woman of color who lived in the last years of the...
View ArticleThanksgiving Day: What to Celebrate
Thanksgiving Day remains the most treasured holiday in the United States. Work comes to a halt, families gather, eat turkey, and count their blessings. A presidential proclamation blesses the day. But...
View ArticleA Christmas Eve Battle for Freedom: A Lesson for Today
Christmas Eve 2012 marks the 175th anniversary of an heroic battle for self-rule and liberty by a daring band of American freedom fighters traditionally ignored by school courses, texts and teachers....
View ArticleLincoln, The Movie
Director: Steven Spielberg Run time: 2 hours 30 minutes Rated: PG-13 (Drama) Released: 2012 Like just about everyone who has seen it, I was enthralled by “Lincoln,” the Hollywood film directed with...
View ArticleTeaching Outside the Textbook: From ‘The Abolitionists’ to a Two-Term Black...
This week PBS’s The American Experience concluded “The Abolitionists,” a searing three-part documentary on a fiercely committed band of white and African American freedom fighters. It took a fresh look...
View ArticleThe Battle to Desegregate San Francisco Streetcars
Only months after San Francisco’s horse-powered streetcar companies during the Civil War dispatched their streetcars—with orders to only accept white passengers—African American citizens began to...
View ArticleAn Ancient Seminole Christmas Gift: Freedom
Those who honor the memory of Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and the many others who gave their lives to advance liberty and justice in the United States, are invited to accept this...
View ArticleDr. King’s Legacy Isn’t Just a Dream. It’s Denouncing War, Poverty, and...
This year, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 85-years-old. Since he embraced peace, practiced nonviolent resistance, and sought a loving society, for years the media has cast him as a sincere,...
View ArticleThe Forgotten Fight Against Fascism
In late 1944 as a high school senior I rushed off to a U.S. Navy recruiting station ready to take on world fascism. Cooler heads insisted I wait until my graduation in June. After boot camp I served in...
View ArticleThe First National Congress of Black Native American Indians – July 19, 2014
Congratulations to the hundreds of delegates and to organizer Jay Winter Nightwolf for assembling the First National Congress of Black Native American Indians. From the sun-splashed islands of the...
View ArticleIll Winds Drove Columbus
Columbus’s Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria were driven across the Atlantic by the same ill winds that from 1095 to 1272 launched nine Crusades to capture Muslim Jerusalem. Defeated and humiliated the...
View ArticleNATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH: The Politics of Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving remains the most treasured holiday in the United States, honored by Presidents since Abraham Lincoln initiated the Holiday to rouse patriotism in a war that was not going well....
View Article“The Birth of a Nation”: A Century Later
By an odd coincidence the first week of Black History Month this February, Time magazine ran an article on the 100th anniversary of the first public showing of the movie classic The Birth of a Nation....
View ArticleAn Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Author: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Publisher: Beacon Press, 2014 It is not easy to condense the United States narrative from its Indigenous people to the US Gulf Wars in less than 300 pages. It is even...
View ArticleCongratulations to Phil Pompey Fixico
FIRST, Congratulations to Honorable Ambassador Fidelia Graand-Galon of the Republic of Suriname who, speaking for her country’s “Maroon Women’s Network,” invited my dear friend Phil Pompey Fixico,...
View ArticleTearing Down the Flags of Hatred and Oppression
1935 was half a century before Bree Newsome was born and 80 years before she climbed that flagpole to pull down a Confederate flag that stood for slaveholders, racial terror and treason. She and James...
View ArticleThe Maroon Conference
One of the founding myths of this country is that world liberty began in 1776 with the Minute Men at Concord bridge, the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson. This neglects the history of...
View Article“Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage” Lecture, Discussion and Book Signing
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View Article“The Birth of a Nation”: A Century Later
By an odd coincidence the first week of Black History Month this February, Time magazine ran an article on the 100th anniversary of the first public showing of the movie classic The Birth of a Nation....
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