Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

18 November 2020Access AmericaAnniversary, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter Movement, BLM, Cape Cod, Cape Cod Bay, Colonists, Colonization, Leuphana, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Massachusetts, Mayflower, Native Americans, New England, Patuxet, Plymouth, Slavery, ThanksgivingHenrike Kattoll

Hiding in Plain Sight: Legacies of Colonization in New England and the 400th Anniversary of the Mayflower

By Christoph Strobel

Mayflower II, a replica of the original Mayflower docked at Plymouth, Massachusetts

Early in November 1620, after a rough Atlantic crossing of about two months, an aging ship called Mayflower arrived in the coastal waters of what we today call Cape Cod Bay. By mid-December, the colonists had chosen a site they called Plymouth, which is about 40 miles south of the current city of Boston. Although English colonization had begun further south in the Chesapeake Bay area over a decade earlier – not to speak of even earlier Spanish and French efforts – the arrival of the Mayflower is frequently imagined by many in American mainstream society as the founding moment of the United States. Largely spurred and popularized by the Thanksgiving holiday, this founding myth all too often minimizes the impact of colonization on the indigenous peoples of the region; theirs is a history that hides in plain sight.

29 July 2020Access America"Colored Area", Alabama, Bigotry, Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights, Civil Rights Movement, Education, Emmett Till, Eric Garner, George Floyd, Justice, Law Enforcement, Leuphana, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, March to Justice, Midwest, Mississippi, Montgomery, Oklahoma, Protests, Race, Rosa Parks, Talking About Race, Voting Rights Act of 1965Henrike Kattoll

The Long March to Justice

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Photo Credit: “Miami Protest, June 7, 2020” by Mike Shaheen

When I was five years old, I announced my new discovery: “Negroes (the polite term at the time) are bad.” My parents tried to correct me, but I felt my logic was unshakable: When the radio reported a crime, the perpetrator was often black. They never said that a suspect was white. I didn’t know any black people in our segregated town, but I knew many white people, and none of them were criminals. This was an open-and-shut case in my five-year old’s mind.

A few weeks later, my father took me downtown to see a parade. He struck up a conversation with a black woman we were standing next to. She had a baby, who captured my interest, though I was more entranced by her Kraft Caramels (my favorite candy at the time) she shared generously with me. This, of course, completely shattered my baby bigotry.

When I was approaching middle age, I reflected on the incident. Only then did I realize that when I was young, parade-viewing areas – as well as everything else – were strictly segregated in Enid, Oklahoma. It must have taken some planning and more than a small amount of courage to arrange for us to stand in the “colored area” next to a friendly woman who just happened to have a cute baby and my favorite candies.

The issue of race did not come up often in our small, mostly white town (at least not in the white community), so I had little need to reflect on what I had learned until Emmett Till’s murder on August 28, 1955, made national news and provoked national outrage.

10 June 2020Teaching ToolsAfrican American Culture, African American History, Against Racism, Anti-Racism, Black Lives Matter, Educate Yourself, Leuphana, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Race, Racism, Talking About Race, White PrivilegeHenrike Kattoll

A Call for 60s-Style Teach-ins on Anti-Racism

By Sabrina Völz

Photo Credit: “DSC8902 – The Elephant in the Room” by damienconway30

Let’s start off with a few telling facts: The origin of the word “racism” stems from the French word racisme which appeared during the last decades of the 19^th century. In English, however, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, “Racism appears to be a word of recent origin, with no citations currently known that would suggest the word was in use prior to the early 20^th century.” Now, let that sink in. The people at Webster are also quick to point out that just because the word is “fairly new” doesn’t mean that “the concept of racism did not exist in the distant past.” No wonder we – and with we, I mean all societies – have a problem with racism. So let’s get to the root of it and root it out.