Author: Reggie Jackson

The sports venues of our local schools continue to be a space where racism flourishes. Earlier this year I wrote about the use of blackface to taunt Nicolet basketball star Jalen Johnson. Just last month Brown Deer High School and Cudahy High School played a football game. A white player on Cudahy’s team called a black player on Brown Deer’s team the N-word. A Wauwatosa East football player says he was subjected to racist epithets while playing against Oconomowoc on October 18. The Superintendent of Brown Deer, Deb Kerr, spoke to the news media recently about the incident. “We’ve...

“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!” – President Donald Trump tweet, October 2019 “And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message...

The things Americans don’t know about Columbus explains to me why the nation celebrates Columbus Day. We all learned the same story of Columbus “sailing the ocean blue and discovering America.” For the most part, our schools still teach this story. To those who know better, the story is obviously not accurate. To begin with, it is not possible to discover a place where millions of people already live. Is Columbus responsible for the genocide of the indigenous population? The answer to this question depends on whom you ask. Once again, for those who know better the answer is...

“As enslaved people had children and the enslaved population grew, slaveholders in areas that had once seen massive in-migration of enslaved people through migration and purchase – upcountry South Carolina, central Kentucky, through central Tennessee into northern Alabama, the Natchez District of Mississippi, parts of Georgia and Alabama – found themselves in possession of “surplus” labor. Slaveholders thus enriched themselves not just through slaves’ production of cotton but through their reproduction. This agonizing and traumatic experience of uprooting and separation from families through the domestic slave trade crossed the American South in complicated and ever-changing patterns.” – The Forced...

“Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech one at Little Rock, Arkansas, last Saturday morning where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket – the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.” – Memphis Free Speech May 21, 1892 None of us who were around will forget the...

As we approach the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans enslaved in what would become the United States, most Americans know very little about the institution that was one of the core foundational pieces of our nation. The fact that we know so little is not accidental. The history of 246 years of enslavement is not taught to any of us with a level of detail that will allow us to understand its importance. Why is this the case? Is it because white people are ashamed or guilty about this history? I don’t think so. I...