In the season two penultimate episode of WGN America’s heart-pounding, scripted series Underground, freedom is at stake and new alliances must be forged in a riveting test of personal will and character. Written by Misha Green and Joe Pokaski and directed by Lawrence Trilling, Cato (Alano Miller) takes extreme measures to prove his loyalty to […]
Rikers Island, New York’s infamous jail, has a reputation of violence, corruption and oppression. Recently, activists hoped to have the prison’s name changed have after historians linked the name Rikers to a Dutch family that participated in an illegal slavery scheme. Richard Riker, a descendant of Dutch immigrant Abraham Ryken, was reported to be a […]
As Underground winds down to its conclusion this season, we have another episode to check out. Every week has been yet more suspense about the fate of the Macon 7 – or what’s left of them. This has been a pretty tough season for Cato, Rosalee and Ernestine, but hey, slavery is a pretty damn […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been years since Isabell Meggett Lucas has been inside the tiny house she was born in, a former slave cabin where her ancestors sought refuge from the hot South Carolina sun. But the 86-year-old woman never envisioned that when she finally returned, the wooden two-room house would be viewed by millions […]
Each week things heat up and Wednesday’s episode was no different! Let’s jump in. Cato hosts a prestigious party in Philadelphia attended by Frederick Douglass (played by the show’s Executive Producer, John Legend) and other prominent abolitionists to discuss the cause, but not before chaos ensues. Back at the boarding house, hunters arrest Georgia for […]
With photos of Harriet Tubman being few and far between, when a rare new photo of her surfaced it was a huge deal. While most photos depict Tubman as an elderly woman, a newly unearthed picture shows a much younger Tubman and was quickly acquired by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History […]
Oney “Ona” Judge, also known as Oney Judge Staines, gained fame as an escaped slave who avoided the search efforts of President George Washington. Much of Judge’s story became known shortly before her death via a pair of interviews and was a valuable resource to abolitionists. Born in 1773 at Virginia’s Mount Vernon estate to […]
Eli Whitney, who is credited for patenting the cotton gin machine on this day in 1794, became a topic of discussion at the top of this year’s Black History Month. Although the farmer and inventor was depicted as a Black man to some students, in fact, Whitney was a white man. Born December 8, 1765 […]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Harvard University is taking new steps to confront its past ties to slavery. The Ivy League school is hosting a conference Friday exploring the historical ties between slavery and early universities, including Harvard. Scholars will present research on the topic and discuss how other colleges have confronted their connections to slavery. […]
Fox News mouthpiece Geraldo Rivera announced that he resigned from his position as an associate fellow of Calhoun College after Yale University said it was renaming its college that pays tribute to John C. Calhoun, a former slave owner and notorious white supremacist. “Been an honor but intolerant insistence on political correctness is lame,” Rivera […]
NBC News Los Angeles reports the Los Angeles United School District is investigating a teacher who gave a word problem to 7-year-olds that featured slaves, cotton picking, “masters,” the "missus," and the “Big House.”
Yale University announced that John C. Calhoun College will be renamed after computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper.
