The COVID outbreaks in American meat-packing warehouses have recently cast attention to the frankly horrifying working conditions in these plants. Like coal-mining and cesspool-cleaning, the practice of animal slaughter and butchery has a long history being considered an undesirable profession — it is one that most of society benefits from, even as the general population […]
Medieval Japanese Butchery Read More »
In Frank Herbert’s sci-fi _Dune_ series, the Bene Gesserit are amazing space-witches who have developed such mental control over their unconscious physiology that their powers seem superhuman. But Herbert’s ideas weren’t merely fiction: the person you see here is not a space witch, but she did figure out a technique of controlling elements of human
Patricia Cowings and the Autogenic-Feedback Training Exercise Read More »
We are likely familiar with the story of the Three Wise Men in the Christian cultural tradition — the visitors from the east whom the Gospel of Matthew says visited the infant Jesus to honor him with gifts. We might not realize, though, that the Gospel writer never indicated the number of _Magi_ (a Greek
The Wise Men of Christian Tradition Read More »
If you haven’t read about the Tulsa Race Massacre of May 31/June 1, 1921, I recommend learning about it. One of the worst race-based killings in American history, it illustrates how simmering bigotry, fear, and mob violence can erupt quickly and cause lasting harm. It also showcases the critical role that historical memory plays in
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 Read More »
Today’s social-media aficionados take a lot of personality tests that we know are pure rot, like “what your birth crystal says about the way you treat your pets” or “what your quarantine eating habits reveal about your financial investment patterns.” The bust pictured here reflects similarly outlandish claims from a century and a half ago,
The Racial Undertones of Phrenology Read More »
Here is a member of the Selous Scouts, a group of special military forces active in the former African state of Rhodesia from 1973-1980. During the Rhodesian Bush War of decolonisation, the Selous Scouts represented the minority white government which struggled to keep power as the black majority fought for an independent state. The Selous
Selous Scouts from the African State of Rhodesia Read More »
In the early 20th century, science was trendy. Unfortunately, so was bigotry, and the eugenics movement took advantage of the scientific-sounding language of genetics to promote the idea that certain types of people (pretty much white, native-born, able-bodied, and Protestant) needed to propagate for the greater good of humanity. Enter the “Fitter Family Contests” held
“Fitter Family Contests” of the Early 20th-Century Read More »
We are inseparable from our environment, and we change with our surroundings whether we are aware of it or not. You are looking at a photo of some of the skulls of the approximately 800,000 Tutsis killed by their Hutu neighbors in the 1994 genocide. It is easy to pretend that the inner workings of
The Propaganda of the Rwandan Genocide Read More »
In the late 1980’s, the country of South Africa was perched on the edge of civil war. The white Afrikaner minority population had enforced a brutal range of policies under its apartheid system. Whites were to live in the wealthy areas, blacks were legally sequestered to the poor lands. Only the pro-apartheid National Party was
de Klerk and Mandela Avoid a Civil War Read More »
Why I had never heard of Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875) before this week seems crazy to me: he is one of the most fascinating people in American history. So that you, dear readers, also cease to abide in similar ignorance, might I introduce this man?.Randolph was descended on his father’s side from the white Virginia
The Life of Paschal Beverly Randolph Read More »
Here you see an image from around 1800 of one Chloe Russell, the purported author of _The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book_. Only a handful of copies exist today, but they provide a tantalizing glimpse into the tastes of some Americans for the occult, and an association of black Americans having access to magical
Purported Author Chloe Russell Read More »
Some moments in history seem dramatically more pivotal than others. Take the episode in 1971 in a town meeting in Durham, North Carolina, for example. A “charrette”, or series of community gatherings, had been organized around the issue of the deeply segregated schools. The goal was to find common ground amidst severe racial tensions. The
The Racial Collaboration of Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis Read More »
This image looks very old, but it was taken in 1984 — it is a picture of a sacred pillar in the religious shrine, or “terreiro,” called the Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká. It is the oldest shrine in Brazil of the syncretic religion Candomblé. And if you’ve never heard of Candomblé, that’s not very
Terreiro – The Oldest Religious Shrine in Brazil Read More »
The first foreign-born Japanese samurai was the warrior Yasuke, represented here in a 2019 sculpture by South African artist Nicola Roos. We don’t have any images from the years around 1579, when he arrived in Japan alongside a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. However, Japanese sources from Yasuke’s contemporaries speak of the power that Yasuke held from
The First Foreign-Born Japanese Samurai Read More »
In Rome during the first and second centuries, explicit evidence abounds about heterosexual desire for women, such as in the story of Europa, featured here in this first-century fresco from Pompeii. Another appears in the novel __Leucippe and Clitophon_, which relays the repeated abductions of the heroine Leucippe, who successfully escapes and consumates her romance
Ancient Roman Female Homosexuality Read More »
Slavery in the Ancient Roman Empire was an entrenched and ubiquitous part of life. Around one of every seven people in the second century was enslaved, and that fact shaped the social lives of Romans in all sorts of ways, including how they thought about sex.This is a sketch of a fourth century CE slave
Ancient Roman Slavery and Prostitution Read More »
The prevalence of slavery in Ancient Rome impacted the sex lives of Roman men, both free and slave. One of the ways it did was by how people thought about male-to-male sexual intercourse.In Classical Athens, there was a common practice of pederasty among men of different ages: an older man was a sort of tutor
Ancient Rome and Homosexuality Read More »
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost the entire continent of Africa was taken over by various European states and business entrepreneurs. Among this area was the eastern state of Tanganyika, modern Tanzania. The two men featured here in chains are reflective of many who rose up against the German colonialist government in
Maji Maji Uprising of Tanganyika Read More »
You are looking at a tiny opening, maybe three feet wide and two feet high, that peers into a hidden room against a stairwell that served as one of the first stopping points of the northbound path of America’s Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad, of course, was the illegal highway that American enslaved people
The ability to control when to have a child has had different histories for women of color and white women in the United States. Then as now, African American women experienced higher levels of poverty and risk of dying in childbirth than their white American sisters. Before Roe v Wade between 1965/67, black maternal death
Black Reproductive Health Read More »
