Black History Facts

The National Negro Labor Council existed because Black workers recognized a contradiction that many labor institutions refused to confront. Labor rights that tolerated racial exclusion weren’t incomplete by accident. They were incomplete by design. Formed in 1951, the Council organized Black workers across industries who faced discrimination not only from employers, but from within unions that claimed to represent the working class. Segregated locals, blocked promotions, u

Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t ask for access to power. She exposed how power worked, who it protected, and what it required to challenge it. She became a leading organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later a central figure in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP wasn’t symbolic opposition. It was a direct challenge to the legitimacy of Mississippi’s all-white Democratic delegation, which had been elected through voter suppression and terror.

Convict leasing wasn’t a footnote to American history. It was the economic engine that replaced slavery in the post–Civil War South. After emancipation, Southern states faced a problem they were determined to solve without abandoning racial hierarchy or cheap labor. Slavery had ended, but the plantation economy had not been meaningfully restructured. Formerly enslaved people were now legally free, mobile, and no longer obligated to work for white landowners

A. Philip Randolph didn’t believe freedom could survive without economic power. He believed political rights without material security were fragile, easily withdrawn, and too often symbolic. That belief shaped everything he built. As the leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph organized Black workers who labored under some of the harshest conditions in American industry.

Most people think they know Black history because they can name a few moments, recognize a handful of dates, and recall a few speeches they were taught mattered. And yet, many of those same people are consistently surprised by the present, by backlash, by retrenchment, and by how fragile progress actually turns out to be.

America tends to treat decline as something that simply happens. Baldwin warned that it’s something the nation moves toward through repeated decisions. “America will destroy itself not because of what Black Americans do but because of what white Americans refuse to do.”

The story many Americans inherited about the Confederacy is tidy and also deeply misleading. It frames the Civil War as a tragic misunderstanding rooted in honor or regional pride, casting the Confederacy as a defender of a way of life rather than slavery.

For decades, the deaths of formerly enslaved people at the Devil’s Punchbowl were explained away as misfortune. The story suggested chaos after emancipation, people wandering into unsafe conditions, disease spreading naturally. No one was responsible. That framing isn’t neutral. It shifts blame onto the dead and turns mass death into an unfortunate accident rather than the result of policy.

The Confederacy was founded to preserve slavery. Secession documents stated it explicitly, speeches affirmed it, the Confederate constitution protected it, and leaders openly described slavery as the cornerstone of their government. These facts weren’t hidden or disputed at the time. What followed wasn’t confusion or forgetfulness, but deliberate replacement.

The phrase "Reconstruction failed" is often repeated as a simple historical fact. Yet, this statement reflects a political judgment rather than an accurate assessment of what Reconstruction accomplished. After the Civil War, the United States embarked on a bold experiment that challenged its own foundations. Reconstruction treated formerly enslaved people as citizens, expanded voting rights, and built public institutions. It forced the nation to confront whether democracy wou

In 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina, witnessed an event that defies the common labels of “civil unrest” or “riot.” What happened was a carefully planned and executed coup that violently removed a legitimately elected, multiracial government. This remains the only successful coup in United States history. Understanding this event sheds light on how democracy can be dismantled when it challenges entrenched power, and how language can be used to erase responsibility for such act

The United States treats 1865 as a clean break: the war ends, the amendment passes, freedom arrives, and the story insists history moves on. It’s a comforting version of events, one that suggests moral progress, offers closure, and frames everything that followed as the result of individual failure rather than inherited systems. But history doesn’t work that way. Slavery didn’t end as a system in 1865; it ended as a legal designation

The Amistad revolt is often remembered as a dramatic episode in abolitionist history. Yet, it also stands as a powerful moment when international law was put to the test. In 1839, a group of kidnapped Africans seized control of the Spanish ship La Amistad, challenging not only their illegal captivity but also the legal systems that claimed to govern such matters.

The image of the cowboy that dominates American culture is not a true reflection of history. It is the product of selective storytelling that has erased the significant role Black cowboys played in shaping the West. After emancipation, Black men made up about 25 percent of the western cattle workforce. Their contributions went far beyond the common stereotypes, shaping the ranching industry and the culture of the American frontier.

I’ve published my first course, Learning How to Read History, as the foundation of the Smart Brown Girl School. It’s a course about orientation, how narratives are shaped, why simplification protects power, and how patterns repeat when they go unexamined.

The rebellion was originally planned for July 4, 1831. The date was deliberate. Turner understood the symbolism of American independence. Illness delayed the effort, and the group regrouped in August. On the night of August 21, Turner and six others began the uprising at the Travis plantation, where Turner was enslaved.

Cultural survival in the Black diaspora was not accidental. It was strategic. Enslavers understood that language, music, and religion sustained identity, which is why those elements were targeted for destruction. What followed was not loss, but transformation.

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, white mobs invaded Greenwood, one of the most successful Black districts in the country. Police disarmed Black residents defending their homes while deputizing attackers. Airplanes dropped incendiaries. Entire city blocks burned. More than 1,200 homes and businesses were destroyed. As many as 300 Black people were killed. Thousands were left homeless. No one was held accountable.

In 1781, a British slave ship named the Zong threw more than one hundred and thirty enslaved Africans into the Atlantic Ocean. This was not an accident or a tragedy of the sea. It was a calculated decision made by the crew to preserve their water supply, but more importantly, to protect their financial interests.

The story of enslaved people is usually framed as labor in the most generic sense. Bodies in fields. Anonymous workers. A blurred mass. That framing is both inaccurate and convenient. The truth is far more powerful. Enslaved Africans brought with them deep reservoirs of knowledge that reshaped the landscape of the Americas. They were highly skilled artisans and agricultural experts long before they arrived here. Their expertise became the backbone of colonial economies.