The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/black-history/)
Gabrielle Foreman, a professor of American literature and African American studies at Penn State University, to give a talk at Cornell discussing preserving the history of 19th-century Black political organizing.
Prof. Derrick Spires, literatures in english, will discuss citizenship and Black intellectual history in a webinar this Wednesday.
President Martha E. Pollack gave faculty and staff the day off for Juneteenth, the oldest commemoration of the end of slavery in the U.S.
Legislator Leslyn McBean-Clairborne (D-2nd District) was elected Chair of the Tompkins County Legislature. She is the first person of color to ever serve in this role.
On the first day of classes, my ASRC 2650 professor commented on the title of his course: African American Literature. He made a quick joke about how peculiar it would be if literature classes simply entitled “Literature”, were instead titled “Euro-American Literature.” The joke was that whiteness is so pervasively the norm that this class on American literature needed to distinguish itself as black or else it would be assumed to be white. It was one of those jokes that is both funny and slightly depressing. Every POC in the class, including myself, chuckled. This reminded me of a conversation I had my sophomore year of high school.
Margaret Washington’s research — which focuses on American education during the 18th and 19th centuries — provided historical information necessary for making the documentary.