A century ago, white mobs killed hundreds of Black people in East St. Louis, Illinois, in a slaughter that shaped Black politics for much of the remainder of the 20th century. Back in 1917, when the white media spoke of “race riots,” they meant mass white assaults on Black communities. Many historians now refer to attacks like the one on East St. Louis, as pogroms -- organized racist bloodbaths. Dr. Randy Short was a principal organizer of three days of actions marking the massacre. He says these rituals of mass murder were standard white political behavior, for many generations.
Orisanmi Burton is an assistant professor at American University’s Department of Anthropology.
Shannon Jones is a member of the Spirit of Mandela’s Peoples' Senate Coordinating Committee.
The Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Racism, political expediency, and outright corruption have always dictated its decisions.
A poem from the late Amiri Baraka questions the myths of U.S. exceptionalism that engulfed the nation after 9/11 attacks, contextualizing them with a history of the West’s centuries-long…
A UN "peacekeeping" mission continues operations in Somalia.
