When Jackie Robinson broke through to the (white) major leagues, "Negro" was the agreed-upon term to designate African-Americans. In fact, he broke through from "the Negro leagues." It would be a historical distortion to say that Robinson had once played in the "black baseball leagues" or the "African-American…

When the author proposed a spring course on major topics in African-American history, drawing a large enrollment was her chief concern. She had previously taught the course under a different title at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a campus with a sizable African-American presence among students and faculty members. She now teaches…

A new institute at Dillard University promises to enliven scholarly research on the cultural and social history of the foods of the African diaspora. To be started next spring with $1-million from the late singer Ray Charles, the Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures will oversee research, academic courses, public programs, and an annual…

In this article, the author traces the development of community colleges, from their ignominious beginnings in the middle of the 20th century to their current status as a valuable part of the higher education community. Likening this development to the progress made by the civil rights movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and…

Slavery's unequivocal evil lies at the heart of debates over apologizing for America's "peculiar institution" and awarding reparations. In The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform, a provocative collection of original essays, the editors Steven Mintz and John Stauffer, along with 23 contributors,…

The origins of African-American studies are shrouded in a hazy collective memory, and it is becoming increasingly clear that before the field can move into the future, it is necessary to clear up some continuing confusion about why and how it began. Clarifying its beginnings has significant implications for how people think about not just a…

This article, discusses Brown University's slavery report, a 106-page narrative examination of the early connections between Brown University and slavery, that has been greeted--so far--with silence. The report, done at the behest of Ruth J. Simmons, Brown's president and herself a descendant of slaves, is an unsparing look at a shameful side of…