Tag: black history

The Learning Curve #89

Smith College Prof. Paula Giddings on Ida B. Wells and Her Anti-Lynching Crusade

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Hosted by Cara Candal
With guest Paula Giddings

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara Candal and guest co-host Derrell Bradford talk with Prof. Paula Giddings, Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College, and author of A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Professor Giddings shares how her experience watching historic events like the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Rides shaped her career in academia and journalism. She discusses her definitive biography of Ida Wells, a late-19th-century Black female journalist and writer who is an unsung figure in American history. She reviews Wells’ underprivileged background – she was born into slavery in Mississippi during the Civil War – but also how she learned to read, attended a Historically Black College, and developed an appreciation for the liberal arts. She offers thoughts on how educators should use Wells’ many public writings, diaries, and firsthand accounts of the horrific crimes of slavery, segregation, the Klan, Jim Crow, and lynching in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help students recognize this nation’s history of racial violence. They also explore Wells’ work as a reformer during an era known for overt racism, as well as rapid industrialization, corrupt urban political machines, and suppression of women’s rights. The interview concludes with Professor Giddings reading from her Wells biography.

Story of the Week: Cara and Derrell hold a moment of silence for the victims of the Uvalde school shooting, and discuss what is (and is not) being done to address the hundreds of thousands of disaffected and distant kids across the country who are struggling with mental health issues, especially in the COVID era.

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The Learning Curve #87

Columbia’s Prof. Nicholas Lemann on the Great Migration, the SAT, & Meritocracy

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson
With guest Nicholas Lemann

This week on “The Learning Curve,” guest co-host Kerry McDonald talks with Nicholas Lemann, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus of the Columbia School of Journalism, and author of the books, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, and The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy. He reviews the history, design, and purpose of the SAT and standardized assessments of academic merit, and how secondary schools and higher education institutions have used, or misused, tests as they relate to race and equality of educational opportunity. He offers thoughts on colleges’ and the American Bar Association’s recent shift away from standardized testing, and the impact on American education and society. Another topic they cover is the Great Migration, the movement of six million Black people from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states between 1910-1970. They explore the larger lessons about this pivotal episode in American history, and the social and educational policies that might help remediate our society’s ongoing racial struggles.

Stories of the Week: Co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson discuss a school choice program in Michigan, that would have provided nearly $8,000 to help families with private school tuition or other expenses such as tutoring, but was vetoed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Also, most education technology companies have seen a steep decline in valuation since the pandemic, defying many expectations that school closures would accelerate and expand the marketplace for digital learning.

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Parsing Immigration Policy #31

Immigration’s Impact on Black Americans: A 200-Year Chronology

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Hosted by Mark Krikorian
With guest Roy Beck

Summary

The passage of landmark immigration legislation in 1965 marked the beginning of the largest sustained wave of immigration in America’s history. This immigration surge, however, was not the first. Immigration surged in the decades leading up to the American Civil War and again starting in the 1880s before being curtailed by war and then by restrictive legislation in the 1920s. Large-scale immigration such as this has important implications for the social, political, and economic conditions in the United States. One widely overlooked implication is the economic harm imposed on Black Americans.

In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, discusses the connection between immigration policy, the labor market, and the economic progress of Black Americans. Beck highlights some of the key points made in his new book, “Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-year history of immigration surges, employer bias, and depression of Black wealth”.

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Black History the Way It Should Be Done

Bereket Kelile
Bereket Kelile
1612
 

I just wanted to take the opportunity to share a podcast I started recording last year. Instead of woke historical revisionism, there are fascinating stories in black history that are worth telling. If there are any creative film production companies, they might even see some potential for great films that are different from the endless sequels and prequels.

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Podcast: Colored Patriots of the American Revolution

Bereket Kelile
Bereket Kelile
159
 

I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a podcast for some time now and I’ve finally got around to doing it. Apropos of Black History Month, I’m going back through a book I read years ago by William C. Nell called Colored Patriots of the American Revolution.

Nell is basically the reason we’re familiar with Crispus Attucks. He and several others asked the Massachusetts legislature to erect a monument to Attucks as an honor to the first martyr of the Revolution. The committee handling the petition said someone else, a boy, had died earlier so their claim wasn’t valid.

At this point, the mid-18th century, the story about Attucks had been nearly forgotten. Nell began an intensive research effort to interview survivors and relatives to compile a record of these black patriots for posterity. His book is the product of that research.

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The Hackneyed Demand for Reparations Lives On

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
8422
 

The Democrats are at it again. It’s election campaign time, and Kamala Harris, for one, is demanding reparations, 150 years after the Civil War, for black Americans who probably know as little about that war as most other Americans:

I think there has to be some form of reparations. We can discuss what that is, but look, we’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery. We’re looking at almost a hundred years of Jim Crow. We’re looking at legalized segregation and, in fact, segregation on so many levels that exists today, based on race. And there has not been any kind of intervention done understanding the harm and the damage that occurred to correct course, and so we are seeing the effects of all of those years play out still today.

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