Black Perspectives is the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). As engaged scholars, we are deeply committed to producing and disseminating cutting-edge research that is accessible to the public and is oriented towards advancing the lives of people of African descent and humanity.

Throughout the course of the virtual discussion, led by Center for the Study of Race and Democracy Director Lois Brown, panelists covered, among other things: the growing fear and distrust of police, the inevitability of exhaustion and the need to keep forging ahead, the loss of a middle ground on issues of race, the kinds of systemic changes needed and how to be an agent of change, and the role and responsibilities of the public and journalists in documenting police brutality.

Seizing Freedom is the personal history of the struggle to define freedom after 400 years of slavery. Using first-hand accounts from diaries, newspapers, speeches, and letters, this is a narrated docu-drama podcast about the failures and successes of the Reconstruction era, told by those who made it happen.

A reading list of nonfiction books that can help you understand where we are right now, how we got here, and where we can go next.

The site will collect resources that you can use for your teaching, to acknowledge and address the history, theory and literature that can contextualize what has led to the activism in the US around racism in the summer of 2020.

In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed.

We've compiled a list of books, films and podcasts about systemic racism, acknowledging that they are just books, films and podcasts. You'll find research on how racism permeates everything from the criminal justice system to health care.

Though Coronavirus did not create the stark social, financial, and political inequalities that define life for many Americans, it has made them more strikingly visible than any moment in recent history. Moderated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, AAPF’s “Under The Blacklight” series seeks to interrupt the narratives, political decisions, and histories that serve as the conditions of possibility for COVID-19’s destruction.

Educators everywhere are asking how can we help students understand that the death of George Floyd was not an isolated, tragic incident perpetrated by a few bad individuals, but part of a broader pattern of institutionalized racism. This collection of articles explains this context.

This website provides pedagogical resources for teachers who want to address the global history of slavery and captivity during the medieval period, broadly defined.