Also American
The story of Black America, from the first Africans to today.
Black history is American history, not a separate shelf, but the same one read in full. The struggles recorded here, from bondage to the long denial of the vote, are the nation’s own to reckon with; the achievement built in spite of them ranks among its finest. This is the American story told whole, a people written out of it, written back in.
November 7 in Black history
Anniversaries that fall on today’s date.
- 1991StruggleMagic Johnson announces HIV-positive status and retiresJohnson's announcement shattered myths about who could contract HIV, brought the epidemic into mainstream American awareness, and made him a global ambassador for HIV/AIDS education.
- 1775StruggleLord Dunmore Flees Virginia Governor's Palace, Signals Freedom Offer to Enslaved PeopleOn November 7, 1775, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore and Royal Governor of Virginia, issued his proclamation from aboard a British warship off Norfolk, declaring martial law and offering freedom to any enslaved or indentured person belonging to 'rebel' colonists who could reach British lines and bear arms. Dunmore had been building toward this for months: in April 1775 he had seized Williamsburg's gunpowder supply; by June 8 he abandoned the Governor's Palace entirely, fearing patriot militia attack. Over the following months, between 800 and 2,000 enslaved people, willing to risk capture, return to slavery, or death, escaped their enslavers and enlisted with Dunmore. He formed them into the Ethiopian Regiment, which bore the motto 'Liberty to Slaves.' Politically, the proclamation was devastatingly effective: it drove wavering Virginia planters into the patriot camp, as the prospect of British-backed slave insurrection terrified the slaveholding class more than any tax dispute. For enslaved people it represented a calculated gamble, many would die of smallpox in British camps, but thousands took it, recognizing that the Revolution offered a potential opening for Black freedom on both sides.
- 1775StruggleLord Dunmore's Proclamation: Freedom Offered to Enslaved People Who Fight for BritainOn November 7, 1775, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore and Royal Governor of Virginia, issued his proclamation from aboard a British warship off Norfolk, declaring martial law and offering freedom to any enslaved or indentured person belonging to rebel colonists who could reach British lines and bear arms. Over the following months, between 800 and 2,000 enslaved people escaped their enslavers and enlisted with Dunmore. He formed them into the Ethiopian Regiment, which bore the motto 'Liberty to Slaves.' Politically, the proclamation drove wavering Virginia planters into the patriot camp, as the prospect of British-backed slave insurrection terrified the slaveholding class more than any tax dispute. For enslaved people it represented a calculated gamble, many would die of smallpox in British camps, but thousands took it, recognizing that the Revolution offered a potential opening for Black freedom on both sides.
- 1841StruggleCreole Revolt: Madison Washington Leads 135 to FreedomOn November 7, 1841, Madison Washington leads 19 enslaved men in seizing the brig Creole, which was transporting 135 enslaved people from Hampton Roads, VA to New Orleans. Washington steers the ship to Nassau, Bahamas, where British authorities free 128 people as legally free upon British soil. The US demands their return; Britain refuses, causing a serious diplomatic incident.
- 1932StrugglePowell v. Alabama: Scottsboro Case Establishes Right to CounselThe Supreme Court reversed the Scottsboro Boys' convictions in Powell v. Alabama (1932), ruling 7–2 that the defendants had been denied effective right to counsel under the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Sutherland wrote that the appointment of counsel was so casual as to be no appointment at all. The ruling was a landmark expansion of the right to counsel and the first time the Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to apply a Bill of Rights protection to state criminal proceedings, though it did not immediately free the defendants.
- 1989StruggleDavid Dinkins Elected New York City's First Black MayorDavid Dinkins defeats Republican Rudy Giuliani to become New York City's first Black mayor. Running on a message of the city as a gorgeous mosaic of diversity, Dinkins wins 51% of the vote. His campaign is energized partly by outrage over the Howard Beach and Bensonhurst murders. He takes office January 1, 1990.
Ways in
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One root runs through all of it: greed.
Following historian Malcolm Foley’s The Anti-Greed Gospel, this site treats the love of money, not an ancient, free-floating hatred, as the root of American racism. Slavery, the slave codes, Jim Crow, redlining, and mass incarceration start to look less like separate evils and more like one machine, retooled across centuries to keep extracting Black labor and wealth.
See how it connectsTwo histories, one people
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How the legal logic of owning Black people, after abolition, became a caste system, a fixed, inherited rank rebuilt through convict leasing, sharecropping, Jim Crow, redlining, and mass incarceration.
How American law turned human beings into property, owned, priced, and inherited, and why that legal category was different from every other form of exclusion.
For a brief, radical decade after the Civil War, Black Americans voted, held office, and built institutions, until a violent campaign of "Redemption" tore it all down. Follow the rise and fall.
Follow the secret network from the plantation to Canada, the conductors, the escapes, and the records that preserved their names.
Follow the line from the kingdoms of West-Central Africa, through the Middle Passage, to the docks of the Chesapeake and Charleston, and the culture that survived the crossing.
From the courtroom victory of 1954 to the bullet in Memphis in 1968, the campaigns, the people, and the laws that broke the legal back of Jim Crow.
Follow the chain from a Cold War proxy war to the prison cells of Black America, a connection rarely taught as a single story.
From the kingdoms of Africa, through the invention of American slavery, to the Black fight for freedom in the Revolution, a guided path through the era most timelines skip.
After Reconstruction collapsed, Black America faced its lowest point, and answered with mass migration, new institutions, and a cultural and political awakening.
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