Scholar’s new biography nails down identity of earliest known Black American woman novelist, first theorized by Gates

Featuring research by fellow Aabid Allibhai

Featuring research by fellow Aabid Allibhai

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University announced this week the 2021-22 class of fellows.

Historians Keisha N. Blain and Ibram X. Kendi began working on “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019” in 2018. The best-selling collection, co-edited by Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” and Blain, author of “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom,” features 80 short historical pieces, personal essays, stories, and 10 poems by prominent Black writers. Told in five-year increments, the work offers a varied look at four centuries of the African American experience.

The congressman from Huntsville, Ala., was quick to claim that the 2020 election was stolen. His district continues to get special treatment.

Many politicians find themselves walking a fine line when it comes to talking about the African American community, LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Princeton University assistant professor of politics, says.

By alumna fellow Anna-Lisa Cox

William Brown managed to get across the river safely, finding work in a small rural Illinois community close to the state’s border with Indiana. He would have known of the new anti-immigration laws, but must have been willing to risk breaking them for a better life. But a sheriff named John Watts soon arrested Mr. Brown for making his illegal crossing. When Mr. Brown could not pay the $50 fine the State of Illinois required of him, Sheriff Watts put him in chains on the Lawrence County courthouse steps and tried to sell him at auction to the...

Read more about New York Times: 'When Anti-Immigration Meant Keeping Out Black Pioneers'

Some years ago, with the Confederate flag in vogue on state license tags, civic boosters in Alabama's high-tech mecca of Huntsville came up with a more dignified vanity-plate statement -- "First to the Moon," in honor of the Saturn V rocket invented there. (True, the inventors were German, Hitler's missile engineers brought to the United States after the war, but their celebrity leader Wernher von Braun liked to say, "You can see I speak with an accent -- that's because I come from Ahlahbahma.")

Now, as the Rocket City cranks up the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Apollo 11 moon...

Read more about CNN.com: 'Alabama abortion law holds state's tangled history up to the light' by Alumna Fellow Diane McWhorter

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, has announced the 2019-2020 class of fellows.