In June 2020, Quaker Oats announced they were revamping their famous (infamous?) brand of breakfast products, Aunt Jemima. From the late 19th century to the late 1980s, Aunt Jemima products prominently featured the image of the Black mammy trope to sell the idea that all white families could have the Read more…
Wherever you have a military, you will have sex. Whether it’s an occupied city, an encampment in a theater of war, or a military base here in the United States, anywhere you have a large population of young men, stationed away from their girlfriends and wives, you will soon have Read more…
Just over one month after the first shots of the Civil War were fired, three enslaved black men got into a row boat and paddled across the James River from mainland Virginia to the Union-occupied Fortress Monroe. Whether they knew it or not, the three young men – named Frank Read more…
Like all things, “fatherhood” has a history. From the enslaved men of the Anglo-American Atlantic to the middling sort to working class daddies and “their chairs,” ideas about fatherhood across socio-economic status in the nineteenth century shared one common trope: fathers were supposed to be providers. This wasn’t always the Read more…
In the age of #MeToo, rape and sexual assault have been consistently in the news. Debates abound about what counts as rape, whose testimony we should believe, and too often, men with power and privilege get away with it. But though it feels pressing right now, none of those debates Read more…
Black cowboys made up at least one third of the cowhands that drove cattle along the long trails from Texas to mid-western and northern points in the middle of the 19th century. But you’d never know that from the images of the “cowboy” in popular culture. Contrary to popular media Read more…
The Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans, Louisiana, is said to be one of the most haunted houses in the French Quarter. The extreme and shocking stories that are told about the Lalaurie house are egregiously exaggerated and overwhelmingly gloss over the real issues of race, gender, and violence prevalent with Read more…
The history of slave rebels and resistance in the Caribbean is a rich and complicated story. Enslaved people in the Caribbean resorted to active resistance much more often than their North American and South American counterparts. Haiti (known then as Saint-Domingue), Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dutch Guianas were particularly prone Read more…
Today, we’re really excited to have an extra special episode for you. We’re honored to present this episode in conjunction with the PBS series, Secrets of the Dead. Coming up this October, Secrets of the Dead will be airing the story of the Woman in the Iron Coffin, in which Read more…
In today’s episode we are discussing some laws in the United States that governed the bodies and lives of enslaved people and follow how those laws changed, or didn’t change, through emancipation and into the late twentieth century. So buckle up for a long look at Slave Codes, Black Codes, Read more…