Racist monuments fall: Watery end for slave trader statue in UK

LONDON (AP)—The toppling of a statue of a notorious slave trader in Bristol, a city in the southwest of England, on Sunday by anti-racism protesters was greeted with joyous scenes.

Demonstrators attached ropes to the statue of Edward Colston before pulling it down. Footage of the moments after the statue crashed to the ground saw … Read the rest

American Slavery, Reinvented

Crops stretch to the horizon. Black bodies pepper the landscape, hunched over as they work the fields. Officers on horseback, armed, oversee the workers.To the untrained eye, the scenes in Angola for Life: Rehabilitation and Reform Inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary, an Atlantic documentary filmed on an old Southern slave-plantation-turned-prison, could have been shot
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Civil-Rights Protests Have Never Been Popular

One common response to the national anthem protests originated by Colin Kaepernick is to disparage them as polarizing. Joe Scarborough, host of Morning Joe, summed up this particular critique in a tweet:

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Five Books to Make You Less Stupid About the Civil War

On Monday, the retired four-star general and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly asserted that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.” This was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Worse, it built on a long tradition of endorsing stupidity in hopes of making Americans stupid about their own … Read the rest