History Archives - The Other Madisons

A Forgotten History And A Story Untold

I am pleased to share this fascinating article written by Charles Shaw: Over the years, I have become aware that in the many volumes of history written on the lives of black Americans there tends to be a focus on slavery, the South, the Civil War, Emancipation, and the Great Migration. It is a familiar narrative repeated in literature, cinema, stage and television. However, I feel such narratives fail to fully present the great dimensions of […]

Police Mistreatment of Black Americans |Getting the Picture

His name was Gordon. He was a runaway slave from a Mississippi plantation. Gordon smeared his body with onions to confuse the pursuing hounds and slave catchers. Then he escaped through the swamps and bayous to the sanctuary of the Union army in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. What made Gordon unforgettable was a photograph of his hideously lash-scarred back. The photograph and Gordon’s story appeared in New York’s Harper’s Weekly Magazine on July 4, 1863. Abolitionists […]

The Stubbornness of America’s Police Brutalty

I live in a Boston suburb with few non-white residents. One evening, police pounded on our door, demanding we explain our presence in the community they were charged to protect. My husband helped them come to an “understanding” – We are part of that community. Though the understanding remains in place for us, police have stopped black visitors on their way to my home, requiring them to identify their destination. Virtually at the very […]

“The Birth of A Nation:” Sparking Racism on The Silver Screen

On February 8, 1915, the blockbuster movie spectacle of The Birth of a Nation appeared on the silver screen, awing millions of white Americans. An on-screen title claims: “This is an historical presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and is not meant to reflect on any race of people today.” To the contrary, the film is a three-hour melodramatic presentation of intense racism disguised as history and displayed in groundbreaking cinematography. With another screen title, […]

The Convenience (or Inconvenience) of Skin Color, Yesterday and Today

For Americans whose skin color is any shade darker than pinkish, “inconvenience” is a euphemism verging on ridiculous understatement. The African slave trade laid the foundations for American racism and for Americans paying so much attention to skin color. The Africans’ dark skin became the foremost symbol of subservience. Later, skin color was quite inconvenient for both escaped slaves and freedmen, long before and long after the Mason-Dixon Line demarcated the regions of our country that […]

If Lincoln Had Lived Would African Americans Be Better Off Today?

On April 14, 1865, an assassin’s bullet entered Abraham Lincoln’s brain, according to the autopsy, “a little to the left of the median line.” With Lincoln’s death early the next day, our country’s political history veered sharply to the right. Would that rightward shift have been more to the center had Lincoln survived? Would African Americans have been spared another hundred years of oppression? Historians speculate endlessly on these questions. Professor Richard Striner, author of Father Abraham: Lincoln’s […]

The Great Migration: More Broken Promises

Wars bring economic and social change. For African Americans, the Civil War brought emancipation and the broken promise of “40 acres and a mule.” World Wars I and II brought about a vast migration of black southern sharecroppers to the industrial north and to a new set of broken promises. From 1915 until about 1940, five to six million African Americans, searching for freedom and economic security, left family, friends, and close-knit communities. Anonymity in large cities like Chicago, New York, […]

Separate & Not Equal | Black Citizens Do Not Receive Equal Legal Protection

On June 7 1892, Homer Plessy, a fair-skinned man, who was one-eighth black, boarded an East Louisiana “whites only” railroad car. He sat down, and then identified himself as Negro. Moments later, he was under arrest. The whole incident was a setup. The Citizens’ Committee of New Orleans had recruited him to challenge a Louisiana railroad segregation law, and it was the committee’s own private investigator who arrested Plessy. Plessy was found guilty of violating the Separate Car Act. He appealed all the way to […]

Race Riot in Lincoln’s Hometown

In August 1908, a two-day race riot erupted in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln’s hometown and the launching site for Barack Obama’s 2008 run for the White House. After allegations that a black man had murdered a white man and that another black man had raped a white woman, whites sought revenge. When the sheriff slipped the two black prisoners out of town, the frustrated mob of ~1,000 turned its fury on the black community, torching […]

Category Archives: History