Warning: This article contains spoilers. Near the end of Sinners, there is a moment that Hollywood rarely permits. The character Smoke guns down a gang of Ku Klux Klan members who have come to murder his people — and then, with hands still trembling, he cradles his newborn child in his arms. Watching it, something strange and powerful stirred within me — as if the film were bending time…
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On July 10, 2025, as federal agents stormed cannabis farms in Ventura County, California, community members rushed to protest what they saw as yet another sweeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. Among them was Jonathan Caravello, a 37-year-old philosophy lecturer at California State University Channel Islands. Today, he faces a federal felony charge that could send him to prison…
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In her powerful text, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks observed, “I have encountered many folks who say they are committed to freedom and justice for all even though the way they live, the values and habits of being they institutionalize daily, in public and private rituals, help maintain the culture of domination, help create an unfree world.
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How did the promise of Black wealth become a tool for white elites? In this Black History Month special of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with UVA professor and author Justene Hill Edwards about the tragic history of the Freedman’s Bank. They dive into the economic intelligence of enslaved people and how they navigated the inherent violence of the slave economy. Professor Hill Edwards also breaks down the betrayal detailed in her book, Savings and Trust, revealing how a bank built for the formerly enslaved was redirected to fund D.C. infrastructure and white elite interests.
Resource Links:
Get the book at this link on bookshop.com
Professor Hill Edwards’ website
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Reviews of Hill Edwards’ latest book:
“This is a revealing history of banking innovation and experimentation, the financial acuity of Black men and women, corruption among powerful trustees, and the failure of Congressional oversight that feels all too familiar in our own era of bank failures, governmental dysfunction, and financial malfeasance. Justene Hill Edwards argues convincingly that the Freedman’s Bank debacle that lost millions of dollars earned and saved by hardworking, self-sacrificing, recently enslaved people is another little-known cause of the contemporary racial wealth gap.” – Tiya Miles, National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
“Savings and Trust, in beautifully written and accessible prose, is a must-read that offers crucial context for understanding the economic plight of formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, racial capitalism, the racial wealth gap, and contemporary calls for reparations.” – Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in
Years ago, I stood at the Black Fist statue, and felt the heaviness of George Floyd’s death. I also felt hope from the protests in his name. The corner of 38th St. and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis was liberated by the people into an art-filled, open space. The joy was electric. Maybe, I thought, maybe this is a glimpse of a Black future. Now, nearly six years after Floyd’s murder…
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Black knowledge production, Black self-understanding, and the power of Black people to represent ourselves is under attack, which means that Black identity and Black meaning-making practices are being erased. In The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933, Black historian Carter G. Woodson wrote, “The education of the Negroes, then, the most important thing in the uplift of the Negroes…
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