History: The Real Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving Day remains the most treasured holiday in the United States. Work comes to a halt, families gather, eat turkey, and count their blessings. A presidential proclamation blesses the day. But we must never forget that it is pre-eminently a political holiday serving political ends... {Read this essay}

History: The Historical Record as a Tribute to Native Americans
Early European explorers and settlers in the Americas depended on the skills and generosity of their Native hosts. No early foreign settlement could have lasted without the cooperation of Native Nations... {Read this essay}

Tribute: Homage to Dear Friend Dr. Ivan Van Sertima
On September 12, 2009 colleagues, students and family members gathered at Kirkpatrick Chapel on the Rutgers University campus for a Memorial Service honoring Ivan Van Sertima, the distinguished anthropologist, historian, linguist and author. William Loren Katz prepared these words about his colleague and friend of many years... {Read this essay}

Current Events: Tortured Reasoning And Tortured Results
Almost every day new evidence emerges showing that torture was authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration. Dick Chaney's flurry of admissions and denials captured media attention, but in ways that only drew more attention to a host of grim crimes carried out in secret and distant places... {Read this essay}

Current Events: Gunplay and the Presidency
On February 18th, Rupert Murdock's New York Post published a cartoon of two beefy white policemen who have just slain the author of the stimulus package—a chimpanzee who lies in a pool of blood. The paper's defense—just good-hearted fun, no harm intended to the first African American President who devised and just signed the package... {Read this essay}

Current Events: The Election of 2008
Yes, a Black man will command the world's strongest nuclear-armed military, a Black First Lady will preside over White House functions, and their little children will play on the country's most famous lawn. But has the poison of racism been driven from the political arena, the school system, the justice system, the prison system and the housing and job market? {Read this essay}

Current Events: "Kill Him"—A Political Chronicle
Two white skinhead believers in "white power" who planned to assassinate candidate Barack Obama in a shooting spree that also targeted African American school children have been arrested by federal authorities in Tennessee. The two men, 20 and 18, are charged with illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun, plans to rob a firearms dealer and making threats against a presidential candidate. The arrest, weeks before the election, is a concrete sign that the terrifying "A-word" of U.S. politics has entered a tumultuous and ground-breaking battle for the White House.... {Read this essay}

Book Review: New York and Slavery: Time to Tell the Truth (2008)
As some southern legislatures, prodded by African American representatives, expressed regret over their states' role in slave trading and exploiting slave labor, a kind of "truth and reconciliation" movement has stirred educators. So far the focus has been on the southern states where African people were brutally exploited, their families sundered, resulting in a civil war and a nation wide system of racial inequality. Now some educators who welcome this truth are claiming it omits the complicity of "the free North"... {Read more}