Lester Craven

Trains Brought Jobs to Former Slaves The golden age of train travel created service sector jobs for the formerly enslaved.

For 90 years, Black men working as Red Caps provided the first impression of St Paul, Minn. to travelers arriving by train. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/trains-bro...

Public Support for Welfare Depends on Who Benefits Social programs that benefitted White Americans in the 1930s faced intense opposition in the 1960s when Black Americans became eligible.

Americans hold inaccurate beliefs about welfare usage believing that programs disproportionately benefit minorities despite the actual demographic realities. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/public-sup...

City Seized Property Because Owners Were Black In a city where fewer than one percent of residents were Black, the all-White government seized the only beachfront property owned by a Black person.

A California city demonstrated how to address an injustice committed by its government in 1924 when it seized the land of a Black couple because of their race. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/city-seize...

Black Americans Are Disadvantaged Just for Being Black From birth, Black Americans experience reduced opportunities in every aspect of life simply because of their skin color.

Because institutions provided remedies to address disadvantages created because of race, my life started better than my father’s. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/black-amer...

US History Textbooks Erase Truth of Slavery Until 1860, no US history textbook ever even mentioned the existence of an antislavery movement.

Generations of American students have learned from textbooks that taught that slaveowners were benevolent, Negros were inferior, and slavery wasn’t that bad. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/us-history...

President’s Dinner With Negro Provokes White Backlash President Theodore Roosevelt’s dinner with Booker T. Washington elicited ferocious criticism from Whites.

Theodore Roosevelt’s relationships with Black people became socially and politically problematic after he became president. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/presidents...

Guns Are the Manifestation of Racial Power Fear of slave insurrections fueled the founding fathers’ determination to ensure that the Constitution protect their right to the guns they needed to stop them from occurring.

The 2nd Amendment was added to the US Constitution to address slaveowners’ fears of slave insurrections. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/guns-are-t...

Lies, Racism Ruin Lives of Nine Black Teenagers Falsely accused of rape, nine Black teenagers were repeatedly unjustly tried and convicted by all-White juries.

The improper convictions of nine Black teenagers in 1931 resulted in two landmark Supreme Court decisions establishing the right to competent counsel and the prohibition of excluding Blacks from juries. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/lies-racis...

Dorothy Counts Fought School Segregation Since Age 15 She fought to be the first Black student in Charlotte’s all-White schools and continued to fight school segregation for the rest of her life.

Brown vs. Board didn’t result in schools desegregating overnight, nor did its effects endure. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/dorothy-co...

HBCUs Succeed Despite Rabid Opposition HBCUs have accomplished their mission despite physical and fiscal assaults.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) embody the pursuit of equal opportunity in America, and as a result have always been opposed by those who prefer that Blacks remain unequal. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

American Race Laws Inspired Nazi Race Laws After a foreign student attended a university in the US, he returned home to help implement America’s system of racial segregation in Germany.

With segregation established despite a Constitution mandating equality, America showed that segregation was natural and allowed the Nazis to think of their own practices as normal. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/american-r...

Julia Roberts' birth was paid for by MLK. Her reaction to the racist interview makes a lot of sense. A tone-deaf Venice Film Festival interview exposed ongoing racism, but Julia Roberts' perfect response makes sense when you know she grew up with civil rights legends.

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USDA Systematically Discriminated Against Black Farmers For most of the 20th century, the USDA prevented Black farmers from accessing government programs.

For decades, the US government intentionally worked against the financial interests of Black farmers. #BlackSky substack.com/@lestercrave...

A History of Deploying the US National Guard to Make White People Feel Safe Since its humble beginnings as a colonial militia, the National Guard has served as slave catchers, civil rights suppressors and a historically anti-Black police force.

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Slavery by Another Name: Debt Peonage The Civil War did not bring an end to the race-based systems of forced, unpaid labor.

Following the Civil War, Congress failed to abolish slavery, leading to an era of neoslavery that persisted for over 80 years. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

Racial Wealth Gap Begins With Banking Scam The federal government created the Freedman’s Bank to protect the newly earned money of the formerly enslaved, instead it stole it.

Less than ten years after the formerly enslaved began earning their own money following the Civil War, a bank fraud stole their savings and destroyed Black trust in banks for generations. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/racial-wea...

Slavery by Another Name: Chain Gangs The Civil War did not bring an end to the race-based systems of forced, unpaid labor.

Around the year 1900, as public opinion shifted against private individuals and corporations profiting from forced labor, the government intervened not to abolish forced labor but to redirect its benefits for its own purposes. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

Slavery by Another Name: Convict Leasing The Civil War did not bring an end to the race-based systems of forced, unpaid labor.

The Civil War abolished the legal notion that a person could be owned as property, but it did not eradicate the practice of unpaid forced labor through violent means. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

Colonial Obsession With Hard Work Propelled Slavery The greed of English aristocrats fueled their obsession with extracting ever greater work production from their laborers.

The colonists’ wealth wasn’t a result of their own hard work, but rather the hard work of others. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/colonial-o...

State Militia Fights KKK When Feds Refuse In the aftermath of the Civil War, Arkansas’ governor deployed the state militia to stop anti-Black terrorism by the KKK.

In 1868, the Arkansas governor deployed the national guard (then called state militia) to stop KKK-led violence because the federal government refused to intervene. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

I really appreciate Dr Nunn's research in this area and yet it seems super obvious that a precipitous decline in available labor would yield reduced economic output.

Predatory Lending Targeting Blacks Fueled the Financial Meltdown Predatory lending that targeted African Americans precipitated the global financial crisis in 2008.

Wall Street’s greed that used race as a tool for making money brought economic ruin to Black families and nearly destroyed the global financial system. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/predatory-...

The Slave Trade's Effects on African Economies Today Nearly four centuries of transatlantic slave trade, ending only 160 years ago, had concentrated demographic destructiveness that largely explains Africa's poor economies today.

Despite general acceptance of the magnitude of slavery's atrocities, the enduring effect on African economies today is underappreciated. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

I-20 Built to Permanently Segregate Atlanta After Jim Crow laws were ruled unconstitutional, Atlanta perpetuated segregation through highway planning.

Even something as seemingly race neutral as Atlanta's traffic congestion has been made worse because people who believed in racial segregation designed the interstate highways. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

Predatory Loans Were Developed for Black Borrowers Suburban housing appreciation and urban neighborhood deterioration were a direct result of US housing policy.

A failed 1970s homeownership program for Black Americans cemented White perceptions that they were incapable of being responsible with wealth. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/predatory-...

Federal Government Buries Black Town Under Lake Ethnic cleansing north of Atlanta leads to total destruction of a flourishing African American community.

Georgia’s Lake Lanier is the enduring symbol of one of the most egregious ethnic cleansings in American history. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled attempt to erase Black history.

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.

We Do Things Because They Are Hard The value of facing difficult challenges lies not only in finding solutions, but also in the struggle itself.

America’s problems are an opportunity for producing something better. Avoiding the problems ensures avoiding that better something as well. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/we-do-thin...

A Flint, Michigan city employee flushes out a fire hydrant. Photo: Gladys Williams

White residents and politicians have systematically disinvested in areas vacated by White flight producing infrastructure crises that disproportionately affect Black communities. #BlackSky substack.com/home/post/p-...

I-40 Destroys Thriving Black Nashville Neighborhood In 1955, White civic leaders intentionally routed I-40 through a prosperous Black neighborhood.

One of the effects of disenfranchisement of Black voters is to keep Blacks out of the decision making process for things like where to build highways. #BlackSky lestercraven.substack.com/p/i-40-destr...