AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
PERSPECTIVES
Perspectives on African American History features accounts and descriptions of important but little known events in African American history recalled often by those who were witnesses or participants or viewpoints about historical developments shaping the contemporary black world. Many of these accounts will be instant primary sources available to current visitors to BlackPast and to future historians. Each article is accompanied by a brief biography and photo of its author.
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Thaddeus H. Spratlen: Scholar and Philanthropist Generating Economic Change in Black America
On May 18, 2021, longtime University of Washington Professor Emeritus Thaddeus Spratlen died in Seattle, Washington at the age of...
CRITICAL RACE THEORY: A Brief History
In the article below, legal scholar Malik Simba explains the development of Critical Race Theory, the legal concept that has...
We Can Best Honor Our Past by Not Burying It: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
In the article that follows Syracuse University historian Herbert G. Ruffin II takes us back in time to describe the...
Go Anyplace But Here, Please: The Fight to Train Black Nurses in San Diego
In the article below, independent historian Robert Fikes describes a little-known civil rights campaign in the late 1920s to desegregate...
Manet Harrison And Stephen Fowler: The First Black Power Couple?
While scholars debate the first Power Couple of the 20th Century who were African American, Richard Selcer, a historian of...
Dana, Wyoming, A Black Town in the Coal Mining West
In the following article Wyoming historian Brigida R. Blasi explores the history of now nearly forgotten Dana, a small predominately...
Injustice in Alaska Territory: The World War II Court-martial of Ten Black Soldiers Who Helped Build the ALCAN Highway
In their latest book on the Black soldiers who helped build the Alcan Highway during World War II, authors Christine...
COVID-19: The Myth and the Reality for Black America
In the article below, Dr. Clarence Spigner, an epidemiologist and professor in the School of Public Health at the University...
The Nation of Islam’s Economic Program, 1934-1975
In the following article, historian Nafeesa Muhammad describes the often lauded but understudied economic program of the Nation of Islam...
