In the summer of 1900, a black day laborer in New Orleans named Robert Charles touched off a race riot after a violent confrontation with a white police officer. In the week that followed, Charles would shoot twenty-seven whites, including seven poli
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artistic recreation of Assyrian and Nubian soldier
Around 750BC, the city of Napata (around 400 km of modern day Khartoum in Sudan) rose to prominence. The city was part of an ancient kingdom, named after the Egyptian word for gold—"nub"—hence Nubia
Article on Halloween and the Diaspora by author Nnedi Okorafor. It first appeared on the site Africana.com back in 2000. Though the site is now defunct, some of the better stories I managed to save.
An interesting and thoughtful political and historical critique of the steampunk genre and its focus on modernity. Behind the costumes and nostalia, Stross points to the harsh realities of the era Steampunk draws from--where unchecked imperialism, ca
*inspired by Tony Cade's message to the group about the exciting idea of a movie on Islamic Spain.
In 711AD medieval Spain was invaded by armies from the Muslim world. These invaders would rule the region for the next several hundred years, build las
Old article from March of this year. Earlier articles had found evidence of African DNA among some modern day Britons. And there were accounts from antiquity of "Ethiopian" soldiers sent by the Romans to guard Hadrian's Wall. While "Ethiopian" could
Alleged photo of "Black Confederate soldiers" often passed around and used by revisionist Neo Confederates. The photo however was taken in 1864 Philadelphia (very much a Union stronghold), showing black Union soldiers--o
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I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the
The Middle Passage looms large in the history of the Black Atlantic and the African Diaspora. Writers like Derrick Bell and our own Ronald Jones have touched on the theme of the slave ship, and it seems an area ripe for "imaginings." Below is a 20
If We Must Die, by Eric Robert Taylor, is the first work I've come across that focuses exclusively on African revolts aboard slave ships. Shipboard insurrections, as the author points out, were regular occurances and he goes on to illustrate that fa
...and a few million people died.In 1453 Constantinople fell to Muslim Ottoman Turks, defeating one of the last strongholds of Christianity in the East. With the centuries long feud against Islam still raging, Christian ships found it more difficult-
From 3900 to 3200 B.C., what had once been small villages grew wealthy and powerful along what is now the Nilotic region in Northeast Africa. Two of these villages grew to such power, often due to trade and manufacturing of such items as funerary g
Steven Barne's Lion's Blood takes place in an alternate historical timeline, where the main point of divergence (POD) from our own appears to be a revelation to Alexander the Great of Macedonia which keeps him in Egypt, rather than making forays into