I love to take advantage of any opportunity to learn, and Spring Break is no exception. While my boys and I are on a mission to visit as many National Parks as possible before my oldest turns 18, I make sure each trip has some element of diverse American history. Last year we went to…
Right after the Civil War and the end of legalized enslavement, disgruntled racists were upset that they could not subject African-Americans to forced labor, so they decided to use their power to create new “legal” ways to keep them from advancement. What are Poll Taxes? Amendment 15 was ratified on February 3, 1870, allowing freed…
Why Do We Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr Day? Martin Luther King, Jr. day is traditionally celebrated on the third Monday of January, to put it close to his birthday of January 15. He was born in 1929, the son of a preacher at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. In church, he learned about…
A Brief History of the KKK What is the history of the KKK? It all starts with the Civil War. On March 21, 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens declared in his Cornerstone Speech: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea {of the United States’ Constitution declaring equality for everyone}; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone…
History of Forced Sterilization in the United States When we think of the term “genocide,” we think of Hitler and his 1930s-1940s eugenics campaign, but the part that is not taught in schools is that Hitler was inspired by none other than the practice of forced sterilization in the United States. What Are Eugenics? The term “eugenics”…
Tuskegee Syphilis Study The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was started in 1932 at the Tuskegee Institute in Macon, Alabama. Sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, the subjects were mostly undereducated sharecroppers who were enticed to join the program by benefits like hot food and complimentary visits to a healthcare clinic. Out of around 600 participants, the control group of syphilis-free…
Who Are the Central Park Five? On April 19, 1989, jogger Trisha Meili was brutally attacked and left for dead in Central Park. Once she was found in the bushes in the early morning hours of April 20th, the New York Police Department collected a group of five young teenage boys and interviewed them, the oldest among them was…
The time between when AIDS was first recognized as an epidemic and when President Reagan finally publicly acknowledged it was approximately four years. When it was first publicly acknowledged by the White House staff in 1982, the Press Secretary, Larry Speakes, took the opportunity to crack a homophobic gay “joke” rather than answer the question professionally, and asking the reporter,…
“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society…In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way…
What is the War on Drugs? The war on drugs is not a war in the defense of public health; it is, from its very foundation, a racist political agenda created to control non-white people by creating laws to strip them of their rights. In the 1970s, towards the end of the Vietnam war, anti-war protestors were becoming…