At the beginning of my organizing career, I believed there was only one genuine way for me to shake the foundation of my community: attending protests and bellowing into a megaphone. I figured that these...
Black History Is American History
Black history is American history, but it’s not treated as such. It’s sectioned off like the VIP section in the club, only without the VIP treatment. If you're interested in learning more about Black history—because Black history is your history—you'll probably have to look outside your classroom. Here are moments, developments and figures in Black history that you should know about.
Black history is American history, but it’s not treated as such. It’s sectioned off like the VIP section in the club, only without the VIP treatment. We’re relegated to just one month, and the shortest...
Shortly after Georgia flipped blue and elected its first Black senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock, many took to social media to praise the unrelenting efforts of Black women in making his victory a reality,...
On February 3, 1870 African American men were given the right to vote with the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which declared that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be or...
For over 250 years, people of African descent were enslaved in the United States. Tricked and stolen from their homes, subjected to the brutal Middle Passage, and held in bondage for generations, emancipation...
OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this piece, black feminist writer, editor, and critic Evette Dionne explains how many...
In this expressive op-ed, poet Nikki Giovanni explains that these days belong to the youth of America. What I remember most about growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, in my teen years is my grandmother’s...
In this reported op-ed, writer Em Steck explains the impact of the female pilots of color who served as part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and introduces the African-American pilots barred from...
In the summer of 1921, one of the worst episodes of racist violence in American history erupted in the heart of one of the most prosperous Black communities in the nation. Dubbed “Black Wall Street” due...
In the history of fairness and equality in the United States, there’s no denying that women of color have often come up short. From 19th- and 20th-century feminist movements to modern-day fights for egalitarianism,...
On December 3, 1969, 21-year-old Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, led a political education class, had some dinner, and talked to his mom on the phone. He passed...
In 1964, under the tall green branches of a pecan tree behind her two-bedroom house, activist and civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer met with students and activists from across the country to strategize...
The first day of Black History Month is also the anniversary of a historic civil rights protest and the birth of a student-led movement. February 1 marks the 59th anniversary of the start of the Greensboro...
In September 1971, nearly 1,300 inmates in the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York shook the nation to its core. The bloodiest prison riot in recent American history, the four-day uprising...
A new study by the Pew Research Center reports that more than one-third of Americans think wearing blackface for a Halloween costume is acceptable. In addition, there have been several recent back-to-back...
In a famous oil painting, artist R. McGill Mackall depicts Mary Pickersgill, the woman most known for designing the Star-Spangled Banner in Baltimore to celebrate United States’ victory against Great during...
White supremacy is systemic. It lives in policies like law-and-order policing and access to public goods and services. It thrives in politics with systems that Americans rely on to elect leaders, like...
For many, the phrase “four little girls” might conjure up innocuous images of a school playground where school girls frolic, unbridled by care or caution. But, for many black Americans, the phrase hearkens...
In this op-ed, Jenn M. Jackson, a writer, activist, and assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University, explains the significance of Black History Month. When I was in high school, a boy...
In this lyrical op-ed, writer Brianne James provides a personal take on the victories worth celebrating this Black History Month. I am agency—I have it laced across my lips. I don’t fear prosecution for...
The reckoning on race in the field of economics began around 100 years ago. To put that in perspective, white women had only recently been granted the right to vote, and, in 1921, white people had burned...
On March 2, 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old black teenager, did the same thing. Parks...