It’s true I write about civil rights on my blog often. This entry on the Carroll County Courthouse Massacre (Carroll County, Mississippi) is in that vein, too. Why? Because most readers have no idea how deeply-rooted this issue is in American history. The country has witnessed far more massacres and killings than most of us […]
Tag: African Americans
Octavius Catto, Civil Rights Legend
The career of Octavius Catto ranks among the great stories of the United States in the 1800s. This versatile figure came to prominence during and after the Civil War. This was a time of dramatic change in America. Octavius Catto is a second-generation figure in the struggle of African Americans for equality in the United […]
Thomas Nast and Santa Claus
Thomas Nast and Santa Claus go together. More on their relationship shortly. But first, who was Thomas Nast? Thanks largely to Thomas Nast, the political cartoon is an art form. Even if you don’t look at them regularly, you know the style. Most feature recognizable caricatures of public figures along with short text. The actions […]
Thaddeus Stevens, the Man Who Should be an Icon
It’s unlikely you know much about Thaddeus Stevens. Unless you enjoyed his portrayal by Tommy Lee Jones in the 2012 movie Lincoln, you may not recognize his name at all. This is unfortunate and deserves to be rectified. Thaddeus Stevens is, in fact, one of the great American statesman of the mid-19th century. Before the […]
Racial Exclusivity in Cotter, Arkansas
The idea of racial exclusivity is a simple one. Create racial homogeneity through coordinated and planned action. Just such a program was carried out in Arkansas in the first decade of the 1900s in the town of Cotter. While the events in Cotter lack the outright violence described in my previous posts about Springfield, Illinois, […]
The Polk County Race War of 1896 Arkansas
In my recent post on the Springfield Massacre of 1908, I discussed a disturbing fact of American history. The nation suffered from hundreds of attacks/massacres/eliminations of African Americans in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Yet, most people today know nothing about any of them. So, in this post I’ll relate the story of another, […]