Latest news with #Tubman
Scroll.in
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes: A readers' guide to the seven winning books
Every year, the books chosen for Pulitzer Prizes add up to a specially curated reading list, and the winners of the 2025 Pulitzer Prizes, announced on May 5, are no exception. The annual awards are given by Columbia University for achievements in the United States in 'journalism, arts and letters'. The Prizes were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher. The winners in each category of Books will receive a cash award of $15,000 and a certificate. Here's a guide for readers who'd like to explore the winning books of 2025. (All information has been sourced from publishers.) Fiction James, by Percival Everett The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson's Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. With rumours of a brewing war, James must face the burden he carries: the family he is desperate to protect and the constant lie he must live. And together, the unlikely pair must face the most dangerous odyssey of them all… History Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War, by Edda L Fields-Black Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children's books, and films about Tubman omit a crucial chapter: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory – Beaufort, South Carolina – to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy. Edda L Fields-Black – a descendant of one of the participants in the raid – shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats. In a matter of hours, they torched eight rice plantations and liberated 730 people, people whose Lowcountry Creole language and culture Tubman could not even understand. Black men who had liberated themselves from bondage on South Carolina's Sea Island cotton plantations after the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861 enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and risked their lives in the effort. Using previous unexamined documents, including Tubman's US Civil War Pension File, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, and estate papers from planters; families, Fields-Black brings to life intergenerational, extended enslaved families, neighbors, praise-house members, and sweethearts forced to work in South Carolina's deadly tidal rice swamps, sold, and separated during the antebellum period. When Tubman and the gunboats arrived and blew their steam whistles, many of those people clambered aboard, sailed to freedom, and were eventually reunited with their families. The able-bodied Black men freed in the Combahee River Raid enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought behind Confederate lines for the freedom of others still enslaved not just in South Carolina but Georgia and Florida. History Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, by Kathleen DuVal A millennium ago, North American cities rivalled urban centres around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanisation. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the 16th century, they encountered societies they did not understand – those having developed differently from their own – and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries afterwards, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch – and influenced global markets – and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent's land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off American ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory. In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centred on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant – and will continue far into the future. Biography Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, by Jason Roberts In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic, ever-changing swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible – how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity, both fell far short of their goal. But in the process, they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet, and on humanity itself. The rivalry between these two unique, driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus, with the help of acolyte explorers he called 'apostles' (only half of whom returned alive), gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate and homo sapiens – but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction, formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that, during their lifetimes, Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn. Memoir or Autobiography Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, by Tessa Hulls Tessa Hulls traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations of women in her family. Tessa's grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist swept up by the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival – then promptly had a mental breakdown from which she never recovered. Growing up with Sun Yi, Tessa watches both her mother and grandmother struggle beneath the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness, and bolts to the most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away. Poetry New and Selected Poems, by Marie Howe A collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness. General Nonfiction To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, by Benjamin Nathans Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world's imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorised public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labour camps, sent them into exile – and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the 20th century.
USA Today
05-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Removed Harriet Tubman info from website was 'done without approval,' park service says
Removed Harriet Tubman info from website was 'done without approval,' park service says Harriet Tubman was an abolistionist and freedom seeker who led many others to safety in the north. Her photo and quote have been restored after being removed from a federal website. Show Caption Hide Caption Who Was? Harriet Tubman Learn more about the life of Harriet Tubman. Encyclopaedia Britannica Information about Harriet Tubman has been restored to a National Park Service website about the Underground Railroad. The National Park Service said Monday that a portrait and a quote from Tubman had been removed 'without approval.' As the internet archive Wayback Machine shows, the website "What is the Underground Railroad" in February began with a picture and a quote from Tubman, the formerly enslaved woman who helped shepherd others to freedom in the North. But by the end of February, the website heading showed a collection of stamps honoring those who helped people escape slavery, including Tubman among others. The website change was first reported in a Washington Post investigation. In a statement sent to USA TODAY on Monday, the National Park Service said the change has now been undone. 'Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service's website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership. The webpage was immediately restored to its original content,' a spokesperson said. More: Jackie Robinson article removed from Department of Defense website has been restored The NPS website was among several that were changed in the face of President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government. NPS also edited out "transgender" from its website for the Stonewall National Monument, a small park dedicated to an LGBTQ+ uprising where trans activists were key players. Two Department of Defense websites dedicated to Black veterans, including baseball star Jackie Robinson and Medal of Honor recipient Army Maj. Gen. Charles Gavin Rogers were also temporarily taken offline before being restored. Harriet Tubman picture had been removed, page's intro rewritten Before the change was undone, the website no longer featured a quote from Tubman: "I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger." A comparative look on the Wayback Machine shows that the description of the Underground Railroad was pared down, especially in the introduction. Originally, and currently, the introduction reads: The Underground Railroad – the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War – refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage. Wherever slavery existed, there were efforts to escape. At first to maroon communities in remote or rugged terrain on the edge of settled areas and eventually across state and international borders. These acts of self-emancipation labeled slaves as "fugitives," "escapees," or "runaways," but in retrospect "freedom seeker " is a more accurate description. Many freedom seekers began their journey unaided and many completed their self-emancipation without assistance, but each subsequent decade in which slavery was legal in the United States, there was an increase in active efforts to assist escape. That introduction had been replaced with the following, which notably didn't mention slavery: The Underground Railroad – flourished from the end of the 18th century to the end of the Civil War, was one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement during its evolution over more than three Underground Railroad bridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality; spanned State lines and international borders; and joined the American ideals of liberty and freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the extraordinary actions of ordinary men and women working in common purpose to free a people. Contributing: Fernando Cervantes. Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
USA Today
05-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Who gets to write America's history? Activists prepare to battle Trump administration.
Who gets to write America's history? Activists prepare to battle Trump administration. Historians and activists say its important to protect sites like the Harriet Tubman visitor center, which tell stories of many pasts. Show Caption Hide Caption Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center upholds her legacy The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center is one of two national historical parks keeping the abolitionist's legacy alive. CHURCH CREEK, MD ‒ Deanna Mitchell pointed to the bronze bust of Harriet Tubman at the center's entrance and urged visitors to touch the nape of its neck to feel the scars. The bust, she explained, faced North where Tubman had led dozens of enslaved people to freedom. 'It was a dark time,'' said Mitchell, superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, which includes a visitor's center. Tubman has been the subject of renewed public interest in recent weeks, since the Trump administration briefly removed information about the abolitionist from the National Park Service's website. The Tubman picture and quote were restored after a public uproar, but the move raised alarms amidst other instances of Black and Native American figures being temporarily removed from federal websites. In President Donald Trump's first three months, he has repeatedly taken aim at what he's criticized as unfair "woke" policies to promote DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. As part of that critique, he has targeted the "revisionist" telling of American history, which emphasizes events he describes as negative. "Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth," Trump wrote in a March 27 executive order. In recent years, the National Park Service has touted its efforts to preserve the histories of underrepresented groups, spending millions last year alone to restore and build sites that share the stories of abolitionists like Tubman, along with Japanese interned in World War II and nearly forgotten Mexican farmworkers. But a number of historians, civil right activists and educators worry those kinds of efforts may be scaled back or even eliminated as the Trump administration reshapes how the government presents America's past. 'Very few serious historians, scholars or cultural experts think the problem in America is that we have talked too much about our history of racial injustice, the history of slavery and lynching and segregation," said Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization. 'The problem has been the opposite." And Meeta Anand, senior director of Census and Data Equity at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, sees the federal changes as an attempt to control the story of America. "It represents a very deliberate effort to erase certain communities and the contributions communities have made," she said. 'History has tentacles' On a recent Wednesday, Mitchell led visitors through exhibits telling the story of Tubman's life. She explained how the abolitionist braved death to help family and other enslaved Black people escape along the Underground Railroad. 'She lived a long life based on what she had to endure,' Mitchell told them. The center is one of two National Park Service sites telling Tubman's story. The other is in Auburn, New York, where Tubman later lived until her death at 91. The center, co-managed by the Maryland Park Service, had 30,000 visitors last year. Many had been there before. 'Visitors actually are putting themselves in the space where she was and then they're learning through guided tours," Mitchell said. 'They're learning through tactile objects that they can touch and get information from." Mitchell said she hasn't heard about any proposed cuts to the center and the staff is working hard as it always has to help people better understand history. Just last April, the National Park Service touted $23.4 million in grants for 39 projects that aimed to preserve sites and stories about African American efforts to fight for equal rights. Over the years, the National Park Service evolved from a focus mostly on nature and parks to include sites with rich histories, Mitchell said. 'We realized as a service that history has tentacles,'' she said. 'And there are cultural aspects of our history that need to be preserved and protected.' 'You want people to know the history' The Reidy family studied a map outside the Underground Railroad Visitor Center looking for other Tubman sites to explore. Tim and Kim Reidy brought their children, Elizabeth, and Sam, to the center to learn more about Tubman. They were on a spring break trip from Westchester, New York. 'It seemed like an important and historically relevant aspect of the history of the place to bring them to,'' said Kim Reidy. 'I'm glad that places like this exist.' Elizabeth, 15, had learned about Tubman in school, but she said 'it's so important to have museums and these spaces dedicated to this.' Tim Reidy said the family may also visit the Tubman center in Auburn. 'It's one thing to read about it, but to be in the actual physical space is a whole different experience," he said. 'You can see why people want to come here. You don't want to lose that." Rhonda Miller of Bowie, Maryland, and her daughter, Madison, followed along as Mitchell, the superintendent, led them on a tour of the Tubman center. Miller and other members of Parents Helping Parents Together, a support group for parents of children with special needs, had traveled two hours to the center. Miller grew up learning the basics about Tubman and she and Madison had watched the 2019 movie, 'Harriet.' 'This was building on that, actually going to see places where she may have walked," Miller said. 'I love the way they put this museum together and presented the information. It was really amazing.' Miller said with efforts to erase Black history it was particularly important that Madison also learn about it outside the classroom. 'I would hate to see places like this disappear," Miller said after the visit. 'We need them." 'Treat our history with the respect' A few miles from the center in downtown Cambridge, William Jarmon gathered visitors at the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center to share her history. Tubman spent the first 27 years of her life enslaved in the region. The small museum featured portraits of Tubman and exhibits. A mural of Tubman with an outstretched hand was painted on the side of the building. There are also other nods to Tubman's legacy in the county, including a statue outside the courthouse. Jarmon, president of the Harriet Tubman Organization, a nonprofit that runs the museum, said it relies in part on tours it offers and local support to continue its mission. 'We are making it our business to reach every generation, especially through the schools so that they will understand that it's just not her story, but it's all of our stories," Jarmon said. More: New Alabama sculpture park, Black history museums are changing the way history is told Stevenson said institutions that receive federal funding are feeling pressure to roll back diversity programs. The Equal Justice Initiative has three sites in Montgomery, Alabama, focused on the Black experience, including a new sculpture park. The programs are privately funded. 'I hope this is a short-term problem because I really believe that the majority of people in Congress don't want to defund our major museums and institutions, even if they don't agree with every sentence in those museums," Stevens said. Some groups, including faith leaders, have stepped up to teach more Black history . Others have increased their support of Black-run museums and programs, said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Still, he said, taxpayer-funded institutions should include that history. 'Our expectation is that they treat our history with the respect that it deserves, even as some of us are looking at ways that we can ensure that that history gets maintained," Albright said. Those efforts shouldn't let up, Stevenson said. 'What we should not do is retreat from truth telling, retreat from honest and accurate history, from providing the full story,'' he said. 'That's a recipe for disaster, for fostering ignorance.'
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Prominent Beaufort Pastor Kenneth Hodges has died. ‘It's a shock to the whole congregation'
The Rev. Kenneth Hodges — a prominent pastor of one of Beaufort's oldest churches, a former state lawmaker, businessman, community minded promoter and photographer whose pictures ranged from civil rights icons to famous entertainers — has died. He was 73. Hodges, of Burton, was the pastor at Beaufort's Tabernacle Baptist Church in the center of downtown. After guiding the church for some 30 years, he was as iconic as the weathered wooden church with the massive steeple on Craven Street. The legendary church is a historic landmark where the enslaved first went to worship in the mid-1800s and continues as an active congregation. He leaves behind a legacy of community activism and preserving the history of the church and historic figures with ties to it including Harriet Tubman and Robert Smalls. As a state lawmaker, he supported small businesses in rural areas where he said self-employment was a way out of poverty. Friends and church members confirmed that Hodges died at Beaufort Memorial Hospital Tuesday morning. 'It's a shock to the whole congregation,' said Ed Allen, a church member and former Beaufort County coroner. Hodges had been in the hospital since last Sunday, April 13 after complaining of weakness in his side, Allen said. But congregation members had expected him to recover, said Allen, who had spoken with Hodges this week. Allen described Hodges as a 'community person.' One example, he said, was how he spearheaded a monument to abolitionist Tubman that was erected at the church in June. The storied Tabernacle Baptist Church that Hodges led was officially established in 1863 as a church for Blacks worshipers, although the building dates to 1811. Hodges once described himself as a steward of the church and its history. When whites fled Beaufort following the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Hodges told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet in 2021, 'Blacks remained and worshiped here.' One of his crown jewels was the monument to Tubman which he promoted for years leading fundraising efforts that finally culminated in a sculpture by Colorado-based artist Ed Dwight depicting Tubman leading a faction during the Combahee River Raid in 1863. The statue captures the moments when Tubman joined Col. James Montgomery on an armed steamer sailing from Beaufort on a raid at the Combahee Ferry. Tubman, who had extensive local knowledge of the waters of the Lowcountry, directed the three steamboats with Black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines to assault several plantations to free 750 formerly enslaved people. 'He was very engaged in the community, no question,' said Fred Washington Jr., a church member and former Beaufort City Council and Beaufort County School Board member. 'When he put his mind to something, he went after it.' Hodges also lobbied for a bridge over the Combahee River on U.S. Highway 17 in northern Beaufort County to be named after Tubman. It approved and dedicated in 2008. At the time, Hodges told the Beaufort Gazette he advocated changing the name to educate residents about Tubman's role in the June 1863 raid. Tabernacle Baptist is also known as the final resting place of Robert Smalls, who rose from slavery to Civil War hero and congressman, changing the course of Beaufort's history and he was instrumental in reconstruction after the Civil War. He is buried in the church's cemetery along with his two wives who preceded him in death. Washington said of Hodges, 'he was a student of the life of Robert Smalls.' Smalls died in 1915. Tabernacle Baptist emerged during the Civil War and its early members sent resolutions in support of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation to the president on Jan. 1, 1863. Hodges told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet in 2021 that the resolutions, which are recorded in the Library of Congress, proved the important role of the early church in the formative years of a people as they moved from slavery to freedom, and showed the significance of prayer and praise in their lives. 'The church was the foundation of the Black community,' Hodges said in 2023. 'It's where people come together to worship, to educate their children and to focus on the challenges of each era. Over the decades — from slavery through Reconstruction through Jim Crow through the civil rights movement to today — the church was home to rallies, lectures, concerts. It was here that people became knowledgeable about the various issues impacting them.' Hodges grew up in Bennett's Point in Colleton County and attended Greenpoint Elementary and Walterboro High School. He earned an undergraduate degree at Clark Atlanta University and in 1986 and a master's of divinity at Morehouse University's School of Religion. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2015 until 2016, representing Beaufort and Colleton counties, where he supported legislation that helped people start small businesses and honored S.C. history. 'I believe in self sufficiency, and I believe in some of our rural and remote areas, self employment is their major (opportunity) out of poverty,' Hodges said at the time. Hodges ran unsuccessfully for the late state Sen. Clementa Pinckney's seat in the fall of 2015 after Pinckney, whom he considered a close friend and colleague, was gunned down alongside eight of his parishioners at his Charleston church in June of that year. Hodges lost in a Democratic primary runoff against Walterboro attorney Margie Bright Matthews. She went on to win and is now serving in the S.C. Senate. Tabernacle Baptist has 400 members. Its legacy includes 12 churches that spun off from the original, Hodges said in 2023. One of the biggest challenges today, Hodges said, is that the church is no longer surrounded by the Black community and Black businesses as it once was. 'How do you remain relevant when your community doesn't live right around you,' he wondered. Above the church's sanctuary is this scripture: 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.' Hodges also owned LyBensons' Gallery featuring some of his own photography including photos he took of famous figures such as jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., poet Maya Angelou and Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks. The gallery was once located on 211 Charles Street in downtown Beaufort. Today it is located in The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Visitors' Center on St. Helena Island. Hodges told the Beaufort Gazette in 2012 that he started the business 35 years ago in Atlanta, where he had the opportunity to take pictures for area colleges and universities and those schools asked him to photograph important people who visited the city. One assignment, he noted, led him to the home of Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. 'It was a unique experience,' Hodges said. 'When I went to Mrs. King's home for an assignment, she gave me an obituary from Dr. King's funeral. So that's something that I treasure.'
CBS News
17-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Minnesota's domestic violence orgs say they're in jeopardy over Trump's proposed federal funding cuts
Domestic violence groups across Minnesota and the surrounding region are struggling to determine how they will be able to effectively serve people after President Trump put funding for domestic violence and sexual assault aid in his cost-cutting crosshairs . One of the biggest groups in Minnesota, Tubman , says things are buckling under the financial pressure and uncertainty. The organization helps more than 18,000 women, children and men every year in the form of shelter, housing and legal assistance. If the proposed cuts took effect, Tubman is poised to lose 30% of its $4 million revenue stream. Jen Polzin, Tubman's CEO, says the uncertainty is crippling. "It's a bit like driving with one foot on the gas and one on the brake, right? We're preparing for all these different contingencies and things keep changing and evolving," Polzin said. Tubman provides emergency shelter for survivors and families, long-term housing, mental and chemical health services, orders of protection, legal advice, mental and chemical health services and youth programming. For the past 50 years, Tubman has focused on the diversity of people they help, but now the organization is getting swept up in Mr. Trump's anti-DEI crackdown. "Equity work is woven into every single thing that we do. But if there are limitations that are telling us that we cannot serve people who are immigrants or refugees or who identify as transgender or that we cannot provide culturally specific services, that really limits our effectiveness," said Polzin. Long-term housing is also limited as apartment landlords are turning away Tubman clients, fearful that they soon won't be able to pay rent. "The challenge is that many landlords are already saying because Housing and Urban Development, HUD dollars and housing assistance are in jeopardy, they aren't able to take a chance on the people that we serve. so some of our clients and survivors are turned away," said Polzin. For anonymous, confidential help, people can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or 1-800-787-3224 .
