Person

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Related Excerpts

A group of freedpeople with tools

What Is Owed

William Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen’s case for reparations.
Photo: "Mother Bird Protecting Her Young"

Motherhood at the End of the World

"My job as your mother is to tell you these stories differently, and to tell you other stories that don’t get told at school.”
107th U.S. Colored Troops posing for a picture

People, Not “Voices” or “Bodies,” Make History

We need to do far more than “give voice to the voiceless" to win justice.

History As End

1619, 1776, and the politics of the past.
a pro-Trump protestor climbing scaffolding above a crowd

The Persistence of Hate In American Politics

After Charlottesville, the historian Joan Wallach Scott wanted to find out how societies face up to their past—and why some fail.
An illustration of Black men pulling a platform covered in trash and American symbols.

What Price Wholeness?

A new proposal for reparations for slavery raises three critical questions: How much does America owe? Where will the money come from? And who gets paid?

Is Freedom White?

In our current politics we must be attentive to how talk of American freedom has long been connected to the presumed right of whites to dominate everyone else.
A movie still featuring a close-up of two actors from The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence: How a US Classic Defined Its Era

Cameron Laux looks at how The Age of Innocence – published 100 years ago – marked a pivotal moment in US history.

Watching “Watchmen” as a Descendant of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Who should be allowed to profit from depictions of traumatic events in Black history?
A race wall

A Nation of Walls

An artist-activist catalogues the physical remnants of 'segregation walls,' unassuming bits of racist infrastructure that hide in plain sight in neighborhoods.
The five members of The Band in black and white

Is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” Really a Pro-Confederate Anthem?

The answer may lie in the ear of the beholder.

The Argument of “Afropessimism”

Frank B. Wilderson III sketches a map of the world in which Black people are everywhere integral but always excluded.

Since Emancipation, the United States Has Refused to Make Reparations for Slavery

But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million—not to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers.
partner

The Case for Reparations Is Nothing New

In fact, Black activists and civil rights leaders have been advocating for compensation for the trauma and cost of slavery for centuries.
Painting of a building, entitled "Outpost," by Hattie Ruth Miller.

Unsettling Histories of the South

Social movements that have pushed for inclusion and equality in the South have often evaded or ignored the issue of Native land and sovereignty.

Muskets! Axes! Revolt! Here Are the Plans for a Reenactment of an Actual 1811 Rebellion

This fall 500 Louisianans, in 19th-century attire, will re-create America’s largest plantation uprising.
Cotton field.

How The 1619 Project Rehabilitates the ‘King Cotton’ Thesis

The New York Times’ series on slavery relies on bad scholarship to make an argument with an inauspicious history.
partner

The Black Woman Who Launched The Modern Fight For Reparations

Her grass-roots efforts shaped the conversation and presented a path forward.

Contract Buying Robbed Black Families In Chicago Of Billions

A new study on the toll of contract buying in Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s: $3 billion to $4 billion in lost black wealth.
LBJ at his desk writing.

A Brief History of Slavery Reparation Promises

Several 2020 presidential candidates have called for reparations for slavery in the U.S.