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black history
After No Kings Day, Feed Your Head
We should commit ourselves to becoming students of struggle because there is so much to be gained not simply from action, but from deliberative, informed, and educated action.
Oct 20, 2025
Now that No Kings Day October 2025 has come and gone, what should we do with all our energy?
The carnivalesque atmosphere of protest across the nation on Saturday fed a hunger for political community and solidarity in the face of the relentless assault on our basic democratic rights that has been raging since the start of this year.
The signage alone—from cats kicking crowns to “We in Danger, Girl: Resist”—called us to move from words to action. Now.
Act we should.
For there is plenty to do.
Histories of anti-authoritarian struggle are an indispensable storehouse of knowledge for the days and weeks after the protest is over.
Join the American Civil Liberties Union. Work to support anti-Trump candidates in the 2026 midterms. Write your elected representatives, including judges, to let them know you support their efforts to defend the Constitution. And find out what the local organizers of your No Kings Day have planned next.
We should do all these things.
But we should also read. And study. And debate. And learn.
I’m not kidding.
We should commit ourselves to becoming students of struggle because there is so much to be gained not simply from action, but from deliberative, informed, and educated action.
And history, especially Black history, is a crucial resource in this struggle.
Consider Augustus Wood’s recent book, Class Warfare in Black Atlanta, which maps the ways that working-class African American men and women fought the neoliberal takeover of Atlanta from the 1970s onwards, pushing against both white and Black elites seeking to bulldoze their communities in the name of economic development and “progress.”
Get to know the stories of Phyllis Whatley and Eva Davis, Black working women who built “overlapping” movements across space, housing, and labor to beat back Atlanta’s takeover by urban power brokers. We have so much to learn from their courage and their strategies.
If a scholarly book like Wood’s is too much to pick up, go to your local library and find a novel which fictionalizes key moments and movements in anti-democratic history. Try Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prizewinning The Underground Railroad. Or check out John Lewis’ memoir, Walking With the Wind.
Or if fiction doesn’t appeal, follow a short form like an op-ed. Top of that list right now is Bobby J. Smith’s piece, “Chicago Restaurants Using Civil Rights-Era Playbook to Fight ICE,” which reminds us how prescient, and present, the tactics of the recent past are.
And if reading per se isn’t the way you want to access lessons on how ordinary people fight the power of the state and its legal and carceral systems, check out the website of the MAMAs project, which documents in word and image how the mothers of unjustly incarcerated sons have developed powerful pedagogies over a decade-long struggle for the freedom of their kids.
History comes in many forms and formats. So, as the 1967 Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit” exhorts us, “feed your head.” By whatever means possible.
Because after we put away the No Kings signs for now, we need recourse to concrete examples of how to counter government-sponsored violence and fascist takeover—partly so we can be inspired by those who have come before, and partly so we can develop models based on past patterns and present strategies that we can put into action now.
It goes without saying, of course, that for many communities in the US and elsewhere, these struggles are not new. They are intensified, yes, but they build on micro- and macro-aggressions that have been rending the social and economic fabric for decades if not centuries.
It’s important to remember that wherever violence has happened and the state has exercised lethal power against citizens and other subjects, people have resisted. We have to know these histories.
Luckily, there is a deep and rich archive of protest movements that historians, professional and otherwise, have labored to assemble and preserve precisely to serve us in these times.
Which is exactly why the current regime is banning books, coming after courses and curricula which amplify these histories, and seeking to remake the story of the last 250 years in their own image.
They want to erase the history of survival and resistance which can and will be activated to challenge their arrogation of power—activated to resist the dismantling of democratic foundations and to protect anew those rights which have been hard won over the last two centuries.
Histories of anti-authoritarian struggle are an indispensable storehouse of knowledge for the days and weeks after the protest is over.
We need to study them, with the present in mind. So get out there and read up on the practical examples that Black history especially has to offer us as we seek not just solidarity, but usable forms and portable practices drawn from the work of those who came before us.
When we do so, we ourselves will be making histories available to those who come after us to learn from, to mobilize, and to improve on.
Feed your head, and the rest will follow.
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'She Died Free': Tributes Pour In for Revolutionary Icon Assata Shakur
"They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival," said one admirer.
Sep 27, 2025
Assata Shakur, a Black revolutionary who inspired generations of activists to struggle for a better world, passed away on Thursday in Havana, Cuba, where she had lived in exile from the US for over four decades.
Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced her death on Friday, saying it was caused by a combination of “health conditions and advanced age." She was reportedly 78 years old.
"At approximately 1:15 pm on September 25, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath," her daughter Kakuya Shakur wrote on Facebook on Friday. "Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time. I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this moment. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time."
Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Byron and was also known as Joanne Deborah Chesimard, spent the first three years of her life in Queens, New York before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina. She then returned to Queens for third grade.
"Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations."
"I spent my early childhood in the racist segregated South," she recalled in a 1998 letter to Pope John Paul II. "I later moved to the northern part of the country, where I realized that Black people were equally victimized by racism and oppression."
Shakur became active in the anti-Vietnam War, student, and Black liberation movements while attending Borough of Manhattan Community College and the City College of New York. After graduation, she joined first the Black Panther Party and then the Black Liberation Army (BLA).
"I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the US government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one," she wrote in 2013.
In 1973, she and two other BLA activists were stopped at the New Jersey Turnpike by two state troopers. By the end of the encounter, both Shakur's friend Zayd Malik Shakur and trooper Werner Foerster were shot dead. In 1977, Shakur was convicted of Foerster's murder in a trial she described as a "legal lynching." Throughout her life, she maintained her innocence.
"I was shot once with my arms held up in the air and then once again from the back," she wrote of the shootout.
She was sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years, but didn't long remain behind bars.
"In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case and who were also extremely fearful for my life," she wrote.
In 1984, she claimed asylum in Cuba. Throughout her life, she also remained staunchly committed to the cause of liberation for all oppressed peoples.
"I have advocated and I still advocate revolutionary changes in the structure and in the principles that govern the United States," she wrote to John Paul II. "I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty."
During her exile, her writings, including her 1987 autobiography, gained a wide audience and brought her story and voice to younger activists.
"It is our duty to fight for our freedom," she wrote in one of the book's most famous passages. "It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
She was also influential in the world of music and hip-hop, serving as godmother to Tupac Shakur and inspiring songs by Public Enemy and Common, among others.
The US government did not give up its pursuit of her. In 2013, under President Barack Obama, the Federal Bureau of Investigation named her the first woman on its "Most Wanted Terrorist" list. The FBI and the state of New Jersey also doubled the reward for information leading to her capture. That reward will now never be claimed.
"She died free!" one of her admirers, who uses the handle The Cake Lady, wrote on social media on Friday. "The US government, after decades of pursuit, never got the satisfaction of putting her in a cage. They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival."
News of her passing inspired tributes from social justice and anti-imperialist leaders and organizations, including former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
"We honor the life of comrade Assata Shakur, a revolutionary who inspires and pushes all of us in the struggle for a better world," wrote anti-war group CodePink on social media.
Community organizer Tanisha Long posted: "Assata Shakur joins the ancestors a free woman. She did not die bound by the carceral system and she did not pass away living in a land that never respected or accepted her. Assata taught us that liberation can not be bargained for, it must be taken."
The Revolutionary Blackout Network wrote, "Thank you for fighting to liberate us all, comrade."
The New York-based People's Forum said: "We honor Assata’s life and legacy as a tireless champion of the people and as a symbol of hope and resistance for millions around the world in urgent fight against racism, police brutality, US imperialism, and white supremacy. Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations."
The Democratic Socialists of America vowed to "honor her legacy by recognizing our duty to fight for our freedom, to win, to love, and protect one another because we have nothing to lose but our chains."
Black Lives Matter organizer Malkia Amala Cyril lamented to The Associated Press that Shakur died during a global rise of authoritarianism.
“The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love she practiced if we are going to survive it,” Cyril said.
Several tributes featured Shakur's own words.
"I believe in living," she wrote in a poem at the beginning of her autobiography.
"I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And i believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port."
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American History Is Black History: We Will Not Be Erased
We will become loud about who we are, what we have experienced, and how we have overcome the impossible.
Sep 21, 2025
The Trump-MAGA-white supremacist administration is ordering the removal from displays information and depictions of the era of slavery in the United States. One of the most emblematic images of enslavement is the graphic and soul-shocking image called "The Scourged Back" that depicts the back of Peter Gordon photographed circa 1863 in Louisiana. It shows graphically his healed but black keloid bareback. The photograph of his scarred back yells loudly the horrors and brutality of enslavement. The wounds on Peter Gordon's back were inflicted on him by his so-called owner.
To remove the histories and experiences of Black people in the US is part of the educational pogrom enacted to "whitewash" America's real history. To "whitewash" history is the political project to change the narrative of America and make that narrative into the blessings and triumphs of white people, while ignoring the blemishes, scars, and overcoming that is as great a part of America's history as any other.
The beginning and institution of slavery in North America's British colonies commences in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. It doesn't legally end until 1865. A Civil War had to be fought to settle the question and end the legal institution of slavery. And even when slavery had legally ended, new systems and schemes were developed, particularly in the Southern US, to reinstitute slavery de facto. This system called Jim Crow would continue through to its painstakingly dismantlement by courageous individuals and movements that exposed it and brought about its demise. This means that formal enslavement lasts for 246 years. Then the era of Jim Crow lasts for at least another 100 years, and its effects still persist for many today.
In 2026 the United States of America will celebrate its 250th birthday. In those 250 years of existence, in comparison, there are 89 years of enslavement. Then, there is de-facto enslavement, called Jim Crow or American Apartheid, that lasts for at least another 100 years. So, there is no way that America was born, existed, nor its story told without the story of Black people, and for most of us our saga from enslavement to liberation, and from hardships to overcoming. To remove the histories and narratives of Black people in North Americas is like removing the heart from a living body and along with its heart it also loses its soul. The body and its story without Black history is really a dead and empty narrative and will remain so until America has the courage to tell the whole story.
Not recognizing the presence and history of Black people is to render in perception, historical understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that the United States is a white Christian nation without blemish or scar.
The American narrative is the Statue of Liberty greeting scores of people arriving at Ellis Island. The words on a bronze plaque invites: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." And in the statute's left hand in the form of a tablet is the date July 4, 1776.
There is a limitation in knowing the full history of most Black people. This is because we were treated as property and given names for inventory—bought, sold, raped, and worked to death. Doing genealogies there is usually a brick wall that Black families encounter. What we do know exists through oral traditions that attempt to teach and convey to us experiences and history in a world where we live and work but never existed.
The other story for me is before Ellis Island. My family arrived on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. This was a major marketplace and auction block for the precious and enriching cargo of Black people. When talking to my family, it seems from the narrative, that they and their descendants were on the same plantation in South Carolina for at least 200 years—46 years, more or less, shy of the existence of this country.
There have been ludicrous reasons presented for removing images and memories of slavery. One is that it makes white people feel guilty. The Trump-MAGA-white supremacist administration says that it is "corrosive ideology," which means that a new ideology is being fomented. Evidently the current ideological narrative that includes slavery and overcoming that ordeal somehow eats away and corrodes the so-called American narrative.
But in reality, who is being bothered and feels corroded are the people who want to sanitize and de-color the real history of America. It is not that they are embarrassed by the brutal history of enslavement, but for them they embrace a politically racialized framework proffering that the history, experiences, and existence of Black people don't really exist. This administration has proven how racialized it is. Their efforts through the Department of Government Efficiency cost 350,000 Black women their jobs. Mobs called law enforcement, some in masks and with no identification, roam the streets removing brown and Black immigrants. They have succeeded in some circles in criminalizing immigrants so that they could carry out their agenda of removing non-whites from the population. And not recognizing the presence and history of Black people is to render in perception, historical understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that the United States is a white Christian nation without blemish or scar.
A scripture says that "you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk to them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up." Our story will be told despite this racist agenda of erasure. We will talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We will tell the story unto generations, and we will become loud about who we are, what we have experienced, how we have overcome the impossible with possibilities, and declared, no matter how hard we have been pressed down and ignored, in the spirit of Maya Angelou, "Still I rise!" And so will the history of our experiences rise to the heavens and invade all of American history, and we will not be erased.
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