slavery

Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed explores how slavery is — and isn't — taught. And Above Ground includes poems to his children about what their ancestors endured and escaped. He spoke with Fresh Air in 2021 and 2023.

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. Few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. When knowledge is power, the powerful make knowledge unobtainable or illegal.

The Black Navarros project led by St. Mary's University and the San Antonio African American Community Archive & Museum explores slavery in Spanish colonial-era San Antonio, and how the city's prominent Navarro family played a role in slavery in Texas.

The flight of enslaved people to Mexico is an often untold part of history — and San Antonio played an important role. Professors Mekala Audain and María Esther Hammack were two key speakers at the recent "San Antonio in the Fight & Flight for Freedom" symposium hosted by the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum.

'I make this apology myself. And I feel the weight of the words in my heart and my soul,' King Willem-Alexander said at a ceremony marking 160 years since the end of slavery in the Netherlands.

"You don't hear about enslaved people at Mass or in Sunday school," says Rachel Swarns. Her new book tells the story of 272 enslaved people sold in 1838 to help save what is now Georgetown University.

The descendants of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and those of the people the Lee family enslaved came together for the first time at Arlington House, the national memorial to Lee in Virginia.

The bill calls for replacing the bust of former Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the decision upholding slavery, with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black person to serve on the high court.

Professor Andrew Delbanco gave this year's annual Jefferson Lecture, titled, "The Question of Reparations: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future," where he addressed reparations for slavery in the U.S.

In the book, “South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War,” historian Alice Baumgartner examines the U.S. and Mexico’s complicated ties to slavery and how Mexico’s stance on slavery had a major influence on politics to the North.