On June 27, 2015, Black artist and activist Bree Newsome Bass climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina statehouse and took down the Confederate flag that had flown above the people of that state for over 50 years. This act came 10 days after a white supremacist murdered eight Black parishioners and their pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Grown from a congregation first organized by enslaved and free Blacks in the late 18th century, Emanuel is the oldest African
Methodist Episcopal church in the American South. It is a church where Black freedom has been envisioned and practiced throughout the entirety of its existence, from the 19th-century congregant Denmark Vesey—who bought his own freedom and helped plan
This is how we can envision Black freedom
For the U.S. to untangle itself from its legacy of white supremacism, we must live like we understand what our true history teaches us, from Emmett Till to George Floyd.
Before an integrated crowd of 75,000, Marian Anderson sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday in 1939. Though a renowned classical singer, Anderson wasn’t allowed to perform at Constitution Hall, a venue the Daughters of the American Revolution owns, because she was Black.
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