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  • TV Highlights This Week

News Articles: Slavery

Tagged as: 

  • Book Reviews

'Last Seen': After slavery, family members placed ads looking for loved ones

Formerly enslaved people would placed ads in newspapers hoping to find lost children, parents, spouses and siblings. Historian Judith Giesberg tells the stories of some of those families in a new book.

February 27, 2025
|
By:
  • Maureen Corrigan
Mercer University sophomore Taylor Boyd mounts a piece of the Freedom Seekers exhibit at Tubman African American Museum in Macon. The exhibit features so-called “runaway slave ads” researched by students like Boyd. “They had everyday problems just like us,” Boyd said. “Reading their stories and reading that they were running away to families or they had lovers that really just exemplified the importance of why we need to showcase this.”

Tagged as: 

  • History

Tubman museum's newspaper ad exhibition honors the humanity of enslaved people

When enslaved people fled bondage in the 19th-century South, their enslavers were often forced to describe the people they considered property as human beings in "runaway slave ads" in newspapers. 

February 21, 2025
|
By:
  • Grant Blankenship
Bennett Parten is the author of "Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation".

Tagged as: 

  • History

The largest emancipation event in U.S. history happened in Georgia. A new book describes how

Sherman's march to the sea did more than just burn Atlanta to the ground. It assisted in the emancipation of thousands of enslaved people.

February 11, 2025
|
By:
  • Peter Biello

Tagged as: 

  • Author Interviews

A new book explains what the color blue can teach us about Black history

Imani Perry traces the history and symbolism of the color blue, from the indigo of the slave trade, to Coretta Scott King's wedding dress, to present day cobalt mining. Her new book is Black in Blues.

January 28, 2025
|
By:
  • Tonya Mosley
Cobb County Community Members posed for pictures in front of the bench honoring the legacy of historic African American author, Toni Morrison, and a former enslaved family of a mother and three children. (Friends of the Concord Bridge)

Tagged as: 

  • News

Juneteenth bench project honors author Toni Morrison and a formerly enslaved Cobb County family

On Tuesday, June 18, 2024, in honor of Juneteenth, the Friends of the Concord Bridge, Cobb Parks and the Toni Morrison Society hosted a gathering for the 34th installation of the "Bench by the Road" project at the Silver Comet Trail in Mableton, Ga., honoring the late author Toni Morrison and a formerly enslaved family in Cobb County.

June 19, 2024
|
By:
  • Ambria Burton
This map from Ancestry, one of the world’s largets genealogy companies, shows the number of records found in different Georgia regions for the company’s project to find newspaper records on enslaved people. More than 22,000 former enslaved people’s names were found in Columbus records, the company says. (Ancestry)

Tagged as: 

  • News

22,000 Columbus records found in project that highlights unknown history of enslaved people

More than 22,000 formerly enslaved people are found in records from Columbus that were released in a new project from Ancestry, one of the world’s largest genealogy companies.

June 12, 2024
|
By:
  • Bea Lunardini
Maya Peters-Greno uses a small brush to clean the grime away from a recently recovered headstone in the Penfield African American Cemetery in Greene County.

Tagged as: 

  • History

At the birthplace of Mercer University, a brick wall frames a mystery of racial division

A relatively newly remembered burial ground yields more questions than answers as universities piece together missing links in the history of Georgia’s enslaved populations.

May 08, 2024
|
By:
  • Grant Blankenship
In this Aug. 18, 2011 photo, a prison guard rides a horse alongside prisoners as they return from farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment's exception clause, that allows for prison labor, provided legal cover to round up thousands of mostly young Black men. They then were leased out by states to plantations like Angola and some of the country's biggest privately owned companies, including coal mines and railroads.

Tagged as: 

  • News

Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. The prisoners who help produce these goods are disproportionately people of color.

January 30, 2024
|
By:
  • Associated Press
In this file photo, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks during a town hall on Dec. 18 in Nevada, Iowa.

Tagged as: 

  • Elections

Nikki Haley didn't say slavery caused the Civil War. Now she's facing major backlash

At a campaign event in New Hampshire Wednesday, the former S.C. governor didn't mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War, sparking controversy. Now she's walking back those comments.

December 28, 2023
|
By:
  • Ashley Lopez
From left to right, McIntosh County Commissioners Davis Poole, William Harrell, David Stevens, Roger Lotson and Kate Karwacki sit for a board meeting at the McIntosh County Courthouse on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023.

Tagged as: 

  • Politics

McIntosh County denies racial discrimination claim about rezoning of historic Gullah Geechee area

A February hearing has been set for a lawsuit about the rezoning of Hogg Hummock.

November 29, 2023
|
By:
  • Benjamin Payne
Anita Gail Jones is the author of "The Peach Seed".

Tagged as: 

  • News

A carved peach seed links generations in Georgia-native Anita Gail Jones' debut novel

A long-lost love returns in Albany, Ga., native Anita Gail Jones' debut novel.

October 31, 2023
|
By:
  • Peter Biello
The artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is one of this year's MacArthur fellows. Her sculptures, paintings, installations and photography are displayed in over 30 museums around the globe. When she got news of the s0-called "genius grant," she says, " I was running room to room in the house, feeling a sense of terror and elation."

Tagged as: 

  • Arts & Life

MacArthur 'genius' makes magical art that conjures up her Afro-Cuban roots

One of this year's MacArthur fellows — the so-called 'genius grant' — the artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is inspired by her family's African roots, her Cuban childhood and modern American life.

October 04, 2023
|
By:
  • Malaka Gharib
From left to right, McIntosh County Commissioners Davis Poole, William Harrell, David Stevens, Roger Lotson and Kate Karwacki sit for a board meeting at the McIntosh County Courthouse on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023.

Tagged as: 

  • Politics

‘A few millionaires will come and build’: County board rezones Sapelo Island's Gullah Geechee area

The rezoning more than doubles the maximum legal size of homes on Hogg Hummock, worrying many that Gullah Geechee descendants will be priced out of their ancestral land.

September 13, 2023
|
By:
  • Benjamin Payne
The remains of Catoctin Furnace in Maryland as seen in 2020. Researchers have now analyzed the DNA of enslaved and free Black workers there, connecting them to nearly 42,000 living relatives.

Tagged as: 

  • Research News

A landmark study opens a new possible way for Black Americans to trace their ancestry

Researchers have compared the DNA of 27 Black people who lived at the Catoctin furnace between 1774 and 1850, finding a link between these enslaved Americans and nearly 42,000 living relatives.

August 04, 2023
|
By:
  • Scott Maucione
Erica Woodford is Clerk of Superior Court in Bibb County, Georgia.

Tagged as: 

  • History

‘The Enslaved People Project’: Historic Macon-Bibb courthouse records on view at the Tubman Museum

A new exhibit at the Tubman Museum in Macon showcases research for The Enslaved People Project, an ongoing effort to digitize slavery transaction records found in the Bibb County clerk’s office.

August 02, 2023
|
By:
  • Eliza Moore and
  • Macon Magazine
  • Load More

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