Daina Ramey Berry

Daina Ramey Berry is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a scholar of the enslaved and the award-winning author/editor of books on slavery including The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, the Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation. Follow her on twitter @DainaRameyBerry.

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Raise Up, a sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas, on the grounds of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Dedicated to the victims of American white supremacy, the site demands a reckoning with with the lynching of thousands of black people in a decades-long campaign of racist terror.
Black History

‘Why Did They Hate Us?’: Explaining the Lynching Memorial to My Son

How does one share this painful chapter of America's past? An historian, and mother, describes the indelible impact of her family's visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Black History

How Sally Hemings and Other Enslaved People Secured Precious Pockets of Freedom

In navigating lives of privation and brutality, enslaved people haggled, often daily, for liberties small and large.

Dr. Martin Luther King addressing some 2,000 people on April 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Black History

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Speech

Reflecting on his life that stormy night in Memphis, King considered a panoramic view of the past.