Poor little Dinesh.
Just as wrong & confused as ever. Activists HAVE been targeting the slaveholding legacy of Douglas for years at the University of Chicago (a place he founded in 1856). Two monuments to him there just came down.
A @KevinMKruse style dunk on Douglas/Dinesh
Just as wrong & confused as ever. Activists HAVE been targeting the slaveholding legacy of Douglas for years at the University of Chicago (a place he founded in 1856). Two monuments to him there just came down.
A @KevinMKruse style dunk on Douglas/Dinesh
For me it all started here with @TheRAUC's piece on @BlkPerspectives detailing the University of Chicago's ties to slavery via Stephen A. Douglas's 3000 acre cotton plantation in Lawrence County, Mississippi. aaihs.org/a-case-for-rep… #Twitterstorians #BlkTwitterstorians
That work was then peer-reviewed multiple times (both formally and informally) and was then published at the @JAAHistory which is the oldest and most storied academic journal for African American history in the world. Here is the full piece:
But...
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/69… @ASALH
But...
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/69… @ASALH
We then found out that, (surprise, surprise), Black Chicago was already on the case. @Bronzeville4all had already been memorializing the names of the peoples that Douglas enslaved every year on his birthday at his graveside. …evillehistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/ste… 
What followed were 3 years of marches chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/1…
Teach-Ins chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/2…
Community Forums with @uchicagogsu @ocartman1 @KofiAdemola and others chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/2…
Campaigns by local 5th Graders @TheVLAcademy to change the name of Stephen Douglas Park to Frederick Douglass Park. gofundme.com/f/douglas-park…
P.S. When the City wouldn't do it, someone came through and did it themselves
wbbm780.radio.com/articles/stude…
wbbm780.radio.com/articles/stude…
Oh and, of course, a massive rally at the Douglas Tomb itself at 35th and Cottage Grove in the wake of Charlottesville organized by @R3CoalitionChi and supported by @BLMChi @CAARPRNow @LetUsBreathe773 and many more resistreimaginerebuild.com/2017/08/23/365/
Followed a bit later by a #ReparationsSummit that included @GKMC18 @heyo__tayo @jbkm1973 @chitorture and many more. chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/4…
All this pressure came to bear on the University of Chicago's recent acknowledgement of its historical ties to slavery and its removal of two monuments to Stephen A. Douglas on campus.
However...
there's a catch...
chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/…
However...
there's a catch...
chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/…
As @TheRAUC detailed in their response, the removal of the monuments was NEVER part of the community's demands.Instead, community members were demanding #reparations from the University of Chicago in the form of police abolition, a @ObamaCBA, housing, etc.
In other words, while Douglas has long been a target of activists on the South Side of Chicago, it is his institutional legacy of gentrification, policing, and plunder through #UChicago that activists have been targeting, more so than the mere symbolic markers of that oppression.
So in the end, @DineshDSouza is just as bad at reading activism as he is a reading history.
Illiterate on two counts.
[I won't even bother with his stupid party realignment mischaracterization that @KevinMKruse and other #Twitterstorians mock him for almost daily]
Illiterate on two counts.
[I won't even bother with his stupid party realignment mischaracterization that @KevinMKruse and other #Twitterstorians mock him for almost daily]
