Seminary Built on Slavery and Jim Crow Labor Has Begun Paying Reparations
The Virginia Theological Seminary, in Alexandria, Va., in February began handing out cash payments to the descendants of Black Americans who labored there during the time of slavery and Jim Crow.Credit.Kenny Holston for The New York Times
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Race affects our lives in countless ways. To read more stories on race from The New York Times,
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One night in 1858, Carter Dowling, an enslaved Black man forced to work without pay at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Northern Virginia, made the brave decision to escape.
He made it to Philadelphia, where he met the famed abolitionist William Still. He then continued north to Canada and, after the Civil War, returned to Washington, D.C., where he was able to open a bank account for his children. He eventually went on to work as a labor organizer in Buffalo.
[
Race affects our lives in countless ways. To read more stories on race from The New York Times,
.]
One night in 1858, Carter Dowling, an enslaved Black man forced to work without pay at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Northern Virginia, made the brave decision to escape.
He made it to Philadelphia, where he met the famed abolitionist William Still. He then continued north to Canada and, after the Civil War, returned to Washington, D.C., where he was able to open a bank account for his children. He eventually went on to work as a labor organizer in Buffalo.
To this day, Mr. Dowling’s family line continues. And, most likely for one of the first times in American history, his descendants could receive cash payments for his forced labor.
Telling the Story of the Tulsa Massacre
An array of TV documentaries mark the centennial of one of America’s deadliest outbreaks of racist violence.
The rubble in the aftermath of the destruction of the Greenwood District, as seen in the documentary “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.”Credit.Oklahoma Historical Society
May 30, 2021, 2:11 p.m. ET
The Tulsa race massacre of June 1, 1921, has gone from virtually unknown to emblematic with impressive speed, propelled by the national reckoning with racism and specifically with sanctioned violence against Black Americans. That awareness is reflected in the spate of new television documentaries on the occasion of the massacre’s 100th anniversary.
Using maps, newspaper clippings, testimonies and more, a team of graphics editors created an interactive 3-D portrait of the community that was burned down in 1921.