On this Juneteenth Day, a quote from Professor Manisha Sinha‘s book, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, begins an important New York Times op-ed (written by Jamelle Bouie) on “Why Juneteenth Matters.” Professor Sinha’s argument that slave resistance was crucial for the abolition movement nicely introduces Bouie’s argument that it was enslaved people “who turned a narrow conflict over union into a revolutionary war for freedom” and who continued to fight for their freedom and citizenship.

To join us in reading and reflecting on this Juneteenth, please click here.

Assistant Professor Melanie Newport published a timely op-ed today in the Washington Post titled “Bail funds are having a moment in 2020.” Following the increase in philanthropic donations to bond funds in response to the protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd, Newport traces the long history behind bail, as well as the modern jail system. She writes that “bail emerged tandem with the rise of the modern jail” and soon was used to unfairly target the poor and those perceived as dangerous to a community. However, by the mid-twentieth century, bond funds were established to challenge the unfair jailing system and pretrial process. Newport argues that this legacy of mid-century bail reform has become clear through the Black Lives Matter movement and the “public recognition of the harms of jailing.”

To read this excellent op-ed, please click here.

The Day (of New London) interviewed five historians from Connecticut colleges and universities in an attempt to place the current moment of nationwide protests in the context of US history. The article includes Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music, who refers to the nine straight days of protests and global movement as “unprecedented.” According to Ogbar, the only historical moment of possible comparison was the reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.

To read more of the discussion, please click here.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UConn has launched a new initiative, called The Pandemic Journaling Project, that allows people to document their experiences for personal use and for posterity. The multi-disciplinary journaling project is led by Sarah Willen, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UConn and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at UConn’s Human Rights Institute, along side Katherine Mason, Assistant Professor at Brown University, but was sparked by an email from Richard Brown, a historian and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UConn. Open to anyone 18 or older, the project hopes to include an array of participants, including those from communities hit hardest by the pandemic. Upon collection, the responses will be submitted to a digital data repository and made available for researchers right away. For more information, click here.