Category Archives: Slavery

Freedom Schools Are Back! (Starting In Florida)

[NOTE: Freedom schools were a key element of 1960s civil rights activism in the deep South. Their important legacy is no longer only history, but is now being revived and reinvented, starting in Florida, as resistance to resurgent racism in education. What a great idea.]

Washington Post

After Florida restricts Black history, churches step up to teach it


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By Brittany Shammas
 — September 24, 2023

Lynching memorial (detail)), Montgomery Alabama, Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

MIAMI — They filed into the pews one after the other on a sweltering Wednesday night, clutching Bibles and notepads, ready to learn at church what they no longer trusted would be taught at school.


“BLACK HISTORY MATTERS” proclaimed television screens facing the several dozen men and women settling in at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. An institution in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Liberty City,

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Quaker Book Giveaway: Turning the Page on Florida Censorship

Florida Quakers give away hundreds of Black-history books

BOOK GIVEAWAY A SUCCESS — Members of the DeLand Quakers stand in front of a portion of the books on Black history collected to be distributed at the recent rescheduled Juneteenth celebration. In front, from left, are Kathy Hersh, Heba Ismael, Carol Reed and Bill Brennan. In the back row, same order, are Jim Cain, Beverly Ward, John Heimburg and Bill Kwalwasser. PHOTO COURTESY KATHY HERSH

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Dyer: Police Killings & Trouble In France

Violence in France

On Saturday, the fifth day of violent protests all over France against the police killing of an unarmed teenager,, the daily arrests dropped below 1,000 for the first time – but the violence became even more extreme.

By Gwynne Dyer, in Opinion — July 4 2023

Nahel Merzouk, shot by a French policeman


In L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a southern suburb of Paris, protesters rammed a stolen car through the gates of the mayor’s home shortly after midnight, and then set the vehicle on fire so that the blaze would spread to the house.

The mayor, Vincent Jeanbrun, was still at his office trying to deal with the situation, but his wife, Melanie Nowak, and their two children aged five and seven were in the house.

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