otahkoapisiakii:

robregal:

theambassadorposts:

Reminder: Emmett Till was killed in 1955

Despite what white people of today want to believe, it was NOT that long ago. At all.

Like, my father who is absolutely still alive (he’s sleeping right now though cause it’s after midnight) vividly remembers being packed in a car with some of his siblings and my grandparents and going to hear MLK speak in DC

Rosa Parks only died in 2005

I can only trace my paternal lineage back to my great-great grandfather who was an escaped slave. Like, me myself is only three generations removed from chattel slavery

The daughter of a slave was in the opening ceremony of the National African American History Museum 

This isn’t even touching on the ramifications of Jim Crow Laws. There are literally Sundown Towns (though not with the blatant signage they used to have at the height of Jim Crow) and redlining is still a thing that happens (Google them if you’re unfamiliar)

I really hate that when White people talk about slavery and segregation, they frequently act like it was so long ago because it wasn’t. And that green strip? We’re still going through systemic oppression and racist practices held over from the segregation era. It’s not like the US desegregated and everything was copacetic after

Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to go to a White school is only two months older than my dad

Please, if you’re White, really try to conceptualize how recent these events were and what’s still going on. Just because something is historical doesn’t necessarily mean it happened a long time ago or that its effects aren’t still felt

minima–moralia:

The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, which is the price we paid for segregation. It’s what segregation means, you don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the wall because you don’t want to know.

— James Baldwin, in an excerpt from I Am Not Your Negro (2017) Dir. Raoul Peck

reginasworld:

Recently The Gordon Parks Foundation discovered over 70 unpublished photographs by Parks at the bottom of an old storage box wrapped in paper and marked as “Segregation Series.” These never before series of images not only give us a glimpse into the everyday life of African Americans during the 50′s but are also in full color, something that is uncommon for photographs from that era.