“At Last, a Black History Museum”
The New York Review of Books, November 24, 2016
The Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington—
“In one poisonous collection...relics of Jim Crow swag: mammy salt shakers, Zip Coon puppets, ads for detergent with dancing pickaninnies. My grandparents had some of this stuff.”
ARTICLES
“United States v. Dylann Roof”
The New York Review of Books, March 9, 2017 (part 1)
The trial of a white supremacist in the mass shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina—
“'He’s evil. There is no place on earth for him except the pit of hell. Send himself back to the pit of hell, I say.'”
The New York Review of Books, March 23, 2017 (part 2)
End of the murder trial—
“The defendant does something that will guarantee a death sentence. He wears a pair of white sneakers…decorated with his favored Nazi symbols…the Odal rune and the Lebensrune, with SS bolts.”
ARTICLES
America’s forgotten migration—the journey, at gunpoint, of a million African Americans from the upper South to the cotton South—
“The Slave Trail of Tears.... the story of the masses who trekked a thousand miles…has vanished…. Virginia was the source for the biggest deportation. Nearly 450,000 people were uprooted and sent south from the state…and ‘sold down the river.’”
“Slavery's Enduring Resonance”
The New York Times, March 15, 2015
The shadow of slavery in law enforcement—
“The first armed police force…was assembled to apprehend black people…. I do not mean to suggest that police forces of today are like slave patrols.”
The New York Times, June 17 , 2012
Michelle Obama's family history—
“The hero of the book is Melvinia, Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandmother, who in 1852 was an enslaved 8-year-old girl living on a farm in Spartanburg, S.C., appraised at $475….”
The New York Times, April 12, 2011
Race and memory after 150 years—
“It is said that the South lost the Civil War, but won the peace…as white supremacy grew into the law of the land…. the central scene in the national tragedy.”
The New York Times, December 19, 2010
The Civil War = enslavement, not states' rights—
“I’ve heard it from women and men, from sober people and people liquored up on anti-Washington talk.… The Civil War was about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.”
ARTICLES
1985–95
“At a Theater Devoted to the Past”
Silent film only in 1991—
The New York Times, September 1, 1991
“Robert Rauschenberg's Processed World”
The artist as voracious sampler—
Rizzoli Journal of Art, October 1990
OLD ESSAYS, CLIPPINGS
1985–95
“The Great Sideshow of the Situationist International”
A European art movement in history and memory —
Yale French Studies #73 (1987)