Roundup: Talking About History
This is where we excerpt articles about history that appear in the media. Among the subjects included on this page are: anniversaries of historical events, legacies of presidents, cutting-edge research, and historical disputes.
SOURCE: WSJ (2-1-06)
[Mr. Gates, the executive producer and host of "African American Lives," a four-part series beginning tonight on PBS, is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research there. He is the editor, along with Kwame Anthony Appiah, of "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience" (Running Press, 2003).]
Since 1977, when I sat riveted every night for a week in front of my TV, I have had "Roots" envy. Even if scholars remain deeply skeptical about his methodology, Alex Haley went to his grave believing that he had found the ethnic group from which his African ancestors originated before surviving the dreaded Middle Passage.
Two years before, I proudly told a fellow student at Cambridge, an Anglo-Ghanaian, that I could trace my slave ancestors back to 1819, the birth date of Jane Gates, my paternal great-great-grandmother. I...
Since 1977, when I sat riveted every night for a week in front of my TV, I have had "Roots" envy. Even if scholars remain deeply skeptical about his methodology, Alex Haley went to his grave believing that he had found the ethnic group from which his African ancestors originated before surviving the dreaded Middle Passage.
Two years before, I proudly told a fellow student at Cambridge, an Anglo-Ghanaian, that I could trace my slave ancestors back to 1819, the birth date of Jane Gates, my paternal great-great-grandmother. I...
Thursday, February 2, 2006 - 03:39
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SOURCE: Counterpunch.com (2-1-06)
[Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com, an author and political analyst.]
I certainly appreciate your concern, and I would appreciate anything that you can do to help."
That was the dignified but worried request for help that Coretta Scott King made in a phone conversation with then Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. There was good reason for worry and the plea for help. In early 1959, her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was sentenced to four months of hard labor at Georgia's notorious Reidsville State Prison after being arrested on a trumped up traffic warrant and for violating probation.
The second charge stemmed from King's earlier arrest at a sit-in demonstration. Coretta was deeply pained that King might not make it out of Reidsville alive. There had been rumors and threats of foul play against him. During the tense days of King's imprisonment, Coretta had frantically worked the phones trying...
I certainly appreciate your concern, and I would appreciate anything that you can do to help."
That was the dignified but worried request for help that Coretta Scott King made in a phone conversation with then Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. There was good reason for worry and the plea for help. In early 1959, her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was sentenced to four months of hard labor at Georgia's notorious Reidsville State Prison after being arrested on a trumped up traffic warrant and for violating probation.
The second charge stemmed from King's earlier arrest at a sit-in demonstration. Coretta was deeply pained that King might not make it out of Reidsville alive. There had been rumors and threats of foul play against him. During the tense days of King's imprisonment, Coretta had frantically worked the phones trying...
Thursday, February 2, 2006 - 03:16
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education (1-31-06)
"At universities across North America, endowed chairs have become another weapon in the campus battle between supporters of the Palestinian cause on one side and Israel on the other," says Liel Leibovitz, a contributor to this bimonthly magazine of Jewish culture.
Funds for chairs in Arab studies have come mainly from countries, principalities, and kingdoms in the Persian Gulf, explains Mr. Leibovitz, whereas money for Israeli chairs is largely from wealthy entrepreneurs in the United States. Traditionally such funds have been filtered through departments of Middle East studies. Lately, however, Jewish donors have been establishing Israeli chairs within Jewish-studies departments, "where they perceive faculty committees are more likely to be sympathetic to Israel."
"By keeping the chairs within these safe havens," he writes, "the philanthropists are effectively protecting themselves against the potential of anti-Israel...
Funds for chairs in Arab studies have come mainly from countries, principalities, and kingdoms in the Persian Gulf, explains Mr. Leibovitz, whereas money for Israeli chairs is largely from wealthy entrepreneurs in the United States. Traditionally such funds have been filtered through departments of Middle East studies. Lately, however, Jewish donors have been establishing Israeli chairs within Jewish-studies departments, "where they perceive faculty committees are more likely to be sympathetic to Israel."
"By keeping the chairs within these safe havens," he writes, "the philanthropists are effectively protecting themselves against the potential of anti-Israel...
Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 01:57
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