Professor Ira Katznelson argues that U.S. government policies, beginning in the 1930s, favored white citizens over black citizens in practice, even if the policies' wordings were race-neutral. He discusses this in relation to affirmative-action policies favoring minorities today.
Audio and captioned video options are available.
Spencer Crew, CEO of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and other presenters outline the lives of David Walker and Maria Stewart, African American Boston activists in the 1800s, as well as the lives and efforts of abolitionists generally and the history of the Underground Railroad.
Audio and video options are available.
Professor Mary Frances Berry reviews the life of Callie House, an ex-slave and civil rights activist in the late 1800s and early 1900s who started the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which sought African-American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers. Berry presents House as a forerunner of figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Her presentation includes a question-and-answer session.
Audio and video options are available.
Historian Eve LaPlante examines the life of Judge Samuel Sewall, who condemned over 30 people to death for witchcraft in 1692 and publicly apologized in 1697, spending the rest of his life in penitence and social action. The presentation includes slides.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis tells six stories from the early years of the American Republic, looking at the choices the Founding Fathers faced and the choices they made. Ellis examines the impact these decisions had on U.S. history and how they relate to current situations and life.
Professor and author Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham discusses the creation of the book African American Lives, coedited with Henry Louis Gaters, Jr. The book covers the lives of over 600 notable African Americans, from earliest colonial times to the present day. Higginbotham examines the impact of these individuals on history, the challenges presented in choosing individuals for coverage, and the research required to compile the book.
Audio and video options are available.
Author John Hanson Mitchell outlines his discovery of 2,000 antique glass plate negatives by a previously unknown 19th-century African-American landscape photographer, Robert Alexander Gilbert. Mitchell presents slides of Gilbert's work, and discusses what is known of Gilbert's life.
Writer Carol Bundy talks about the life of her great-great-great uncle, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., a Boston abolitionist and industrialist eventually killed in the Civil War. The presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Scholars P. Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald H. Pitts reveal historical details previously lost to time about the life of Harriet Wilson, author of the 1859 novel Our Nig; Or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Considered by some to be the first North American African-American novelist, Harriet Wilson largely disappeared from the historical record in 1863 until the discovery of new information.
Executive Director of the Museum of Afro-American History Beverly Morgan-Welch discusses the history of the Museum's meeting house and of the museum itself.