Ethnic Cleansing
(Left to right) Black men with the National Guard in Chicago during the 1919 race riot; The Carrier Family of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Black residents forced to leave Oscarville, Georgia's
Sterilization
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‘Act of genocide.’ Eugenics program tried to ‘breed out’ Black people in NC, report says
By: Hayley Fowler, The News & Observer For more than four decades North Carolina’s statewide eugenics program forcibly sterilized almost 7,600 people — many of whom were Black. |
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The Forced Sterilization of Black Women as Reproductive Injustice
By: Willow S. Clouse Focusing on forced sterilization through the experiences of Black women will allow us to gather a fuller understanding of their oppressions and exploitations throughout history and into the present day. |
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Lynching
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History of Lynching in America
By: National Association of Colored People (NAACP) Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive. Black Americans used boycotts, newspaper articles, and civil rights organizations to combat lynchings. |
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Why Is the Negro Lynched?
By: Frederick Douglass Former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass details the stages of persecuting Black people, excuses given for lynching Black people, and white people’s attitude towards Black people after the end of slavery. |
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How White Americans Used Lynchings to Terrorize and Control Black People
By: Jamiles Lartey and Sam Morris, The Guardian White Americans accused Black people of crimes, often sexual assault of white women, as an excuse for lynchings. Entire white families attended lynchings, and the murderers were rarely punished. Lynchings slowed down as a result of the The Great Migration (an exodus of Black people to the north) and the Civil Rights Movement. |
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Lift Every Voice and Sing
Performed by: Jada Holliday Composed by: James Weldon Johnson Also known as the Black National Month, the song was created on the occassion of President Abraham Lincoln's visit to a Black school. The song was later adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when the composer, James Weldon Johnson, led the NAACP in combatting lynchings. |
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The Red Record
By: Ida B. Wells-Barnett Anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells provides statistics and alleged causes of lynching in the U.S., as well as a remedy to end lynching. |
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Lynch Law in Georgia
By: Ida B. Wells-Barnett This book contains a record of twelve lynchings of Black men in the state of Georgia and reports from a Chicago detective sent to investigate the torture, burning, hanging, and lynching of Black men. |
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Lynching in America Website
By: Equal Justice Initiative This site features painful stories of the United States’ history of racial injustice. After slavery ended, lynching became a tool of racial control to reestablish white supremacy and suppress Black civil rights. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched across twenty states between 1877 and 1950. These lynchings were intended to instill fear in Black communities. |
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Lynching, Our National Crime
By: Ida B. Wells This speech was delivered by Ida B. Wells at the National Negro Conference in New York in 1909. Ida B. Wells was a leading figure in the anti-lynching campaign in the United States beginning in the 1890s. She later became a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). |
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Strange Fruit
Performed by: Billie Holiday Lyrics by: Abel Merropol A protest song against lynchings recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. |
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Uprooted
By: Equal Justice Initiative Over a hundred years after Thomas Miles Sr. was lynched in Shrevesport, Louisiana, his family travels to the South for the first time. |
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Oscarville
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The Haunting of Lake Lanier and the Black City Underneath
Oscarville, a Black town near Atlanta, was ethnically cleansed and submerged under water to create Lake Lanier. |
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Relative of Oscarville resident shares history behind the city underneath Lake Lanier
By: La’Tasha Givens, Makayla Richards, and Daris Schneider-Bray Oscarville was a town formed in the late1800’s after slavery. It was a thriving Black community full of carpenters, blacksmiths, bricklayers, with farming as the top trade. The community was destroyed by an angry white mob. Lake Lanier was formed, covering up Oscarville and swallowing most of its history. |
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5 Black American Towns Hidden Under Lakes And Ultimately From History
By: Parker Diakite Historically Black American towns that have been destroyed and buried by a lake or natural park are often referred to as “Drowned Towns.” Here is the story of five drowned towns in Oscarville, Georgia; Kowaliga (Benson), Alabama; Seneca Village in New York City; Susannah, Alabama; and Vanport, Oregon. |
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Beyond Tulsa: The Secret History of Flooding Black Towns to Make Lakes
By: Amber Ruffin Over the past couple years, more Americans have become familiar with the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre, where a white mob burned a vibrant Black community to the ground. Which is crazy. Even crazier? Dozens of other Black towns have been erased off the American map, not by burning them down, but by hiding them under water. Do you know what we mean? Let’s find out in a segment called, “How Did We Get Here?” from comedian Amber Ruffin. |
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Sapelo Island
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Gullah-Geechee People Fight Against “Erasure” of their Historical Land
By: Edwin Rios For more than 230 years, a small community of Gullah-Geechee people, descended from enslaved people, have called Georgia’s Sapelo Island home. County commissioners voted to remove zoning restrictions, and Gullah-Geechee residents fear they will be displaced by wealthy transplants who want to develop larger homes which could force a rise of property taxes. |
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Taxes Threaten an Island Culture in Georgia
By: Kim Severson Sapelo Island holds the largest community of people who identify themselves as saltwater Geechees, sometimes called the Gullahs. For more than 200 years, these descendants of enslaved people have fought to keep their land. Now, stiff county tax increases driven by a shifting economy, bureaucratic bumbling and the unyielding desire for a house on the water have them wondering if their community will finally succumb to cultural erosion. |
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Tulsa Massacre
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A Descriptive Poem of the Tulsa Riot and Massacre
By: A.J. Smitherman Poems composed by A.J. Smitherman, former editor and publisher of the Tulsa Star newspaper. His plant, valued at more than $40 million, and his home were destroyed in the massacre of June 1, 1921. He and his family miraculously escaped with their lives. |
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After the Burning: The Economic Effects of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
By: Alex Albright, Jeremy Cook, James Feigenbaum, Laura Kincaide, Jason Long, and Nathan Nunn The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the looting, burning, and leveling of 35 square blocks of a once-thriving Black neighborhood. We find that for the Black population of Tulsa, in the two decades that followed, the massacre led to declines in home ownership and occupational status. |
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Events of the Tulsa Disaster
By: Mary E. Jones Parrish An account of the Tulsa race riot of 1921 in which white people attacked and murdered Black residents in the Greenwood neighborhood. Includes a collection of shorter witness testimonials and a partial list of property and financial losses of its victims. |
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Recipe for a Massacre: Tulsa 1921
By: Quraysh Ali Lansana A poem about the economic and cultural conditions that led to the Tulsa Massacre, written by a historian with expertise in the Tulsa Massacre. |
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The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: Determining Its Causes and Framing
By: Chris Messer The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon of race riots, particularly the Tulsa riot of 1921. The research focuses on associated causes or precursors to the riot, organizational and governmental responses to the riot, and the issue of framing associated with the same. |
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Watchmen – The Tulsa Race Massacre
By: HBO From the TV series “Watchmen,” a fictionalized recreation of the Tulsa Massacre that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Black people from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The show depicts white citizens using airplanes to attack the Black population. |
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Rosewood Massacre
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Remembering Rosewood
By: Rosewood Heritage Foundation A website featuring testimonies from the Rosewood Massacre survivors and a timeline of events. |
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White Mob Destroys Black Community of Rosewood, Florida
By: Equal Justice Institute On January 5, 1923, a mob of over 200 white men attacked the Black community in Rosewood, Florida, killing over 30 Black women, men, and children, burning the town to the ground, and forcing all survivors to permanently flee Rosewood.
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Sundown Towns
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Sundown Towns (an excerpt)
By: James W. Loewen Sundown Towns were cities that prohibited Black people from being present after sunset. Black people remaining in town after sunset risked being jailed, beaten, or murdered. |
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Sundown on the Prairie:
The Extralegal Campaigns and Efforts from 1889 to 1967 to Exclude African Americans from Norman, Oklahoma By: Michael S. Givel Few Black people lived in Oklahoma until 1970, due to a campaign of violence against Black inhabitants. This article examines the reasons Black people fled Oklahoma and why they returned. |
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Sundown Towns By State
By: Tougaloo College - History & Social Justice An interactive map of sundown towns in the U.S. |
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Structural Racism through Sundown Towns and Its Relationship to COVID-19 Local Risk and Diversity
By: Y. Hswen, F. Yang, C. Le-Compte, et al. The relationship between historical sundown towns and the prevalance of COVID-19 among racial and ethnic groups. |
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Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
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Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
By: Allan M. Brandt In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated an experiment in Macon County, Alabama, to determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in Black males. On several occasions, the USPHS sought to prevent treatment. This article attempts to place the Tuskegee Study in a historical context and to assess its ethical implications. |
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The Tuskegee Experiment: Crash Course Black American History
By: Clint Smith and CrashCourse From 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention operated an extremely unethical medical experiment on the effects of outcomes of untreated syphilis. Hundreds of poor Black men from Macon County, Alabama were enrolled in the study, and treatment for syphilis was withheld from them. Even after antibiotics became available that could cure syphilis, these men were left to suffer from the disease and expose their families to syphilis as well. |
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What is the Tuskegee Study?
By: Attia @PlannedParenthood The Tuskegee Study is a syphilis research experiment that began in 1932 and lasted 40 years. With no informed consent, hundreds of Black men with low incomes were used as test subjects — enticed with offerings such as free meals, health care, and burial stipends. This highly unethical syphilis experiment was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. |
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Bad Blood
By: A&E Network Investigative Reports examines the Tuskegee Experiment where 400 Black men in Alabama were deliberately left with untreated syphilis. |
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