Why Toni Morrison’s Beloved is Both Celebrated and Censored

Toni Morrison’s Beloved receives acclaim and suppression in equal measure, proving that unapologetically centering Blackness in literature is still controversial in the United States.

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Historic Photos, Fresh Stories

Ledger Smith roller skated 700 miles from Chicago to Washington, D.C. in August 1963 to join the March on Washington. His journey, supported by the NAACP, drew national media attention and was an act of resistance against segregation and racism.
 

A symbol of hope and resilience, NC Mutual provided essential financial support to African American and working-class communities for more than a century.

 

Assata Shakur is a lasting symbol of resistance, political commitment, and global struggles for liberation.

 
Years after breaking the color barriers that surrounded baseball and tennis, Jackie Robinson and Althea Gibson changed yet another sport.
 
The Gold Dust Twins advertising campaign used caricatured Black children to sell cleaning products, which reinforced racist stereotypes and white nostalgic myths of Black servitude in the 20th-century United States.
 

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About Picturing Black History

Our Mission

The editorial team at Picturing Black History recognizes the importance of Black history as a subject of academic knowledge and a source of African diaspora identities. We embrace the power of images to capture stories of oppression and resistance, perseverance and resilience, freedom dreams, imagination, and joy within the United States and around the globe.

Picturing Black History emerged in the wake of national and international Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers in 2020. We recognize that Black Lives Matter is a contemporary outgrowth of a long history of Black racial protest in the United States. Picturing Black History is our collaborative effort to contribute to an ongoing public dialogue on the significance of Black history and Black life in the United States and throughout the globe.