‘Cover Stories’ Archives
Commemorating 400 years of Black oppression, resistance and resilience
Ebony Adedayo By Ebony Adedayo, ReCAST Minneapolis Program Manager Aug. 20, 2019 marks the 400th Year Commemoration of Africans being brought to Jamestown, Va. and enslaved by the British. To honor this event, the city of Minneapolis”™ Division of Race and Equity is bringing together city staff and community partners to collectively remember who Africans were prior to the history of enslavement, recover the truth about our oppression and resistance, and reimagine a future that is not predicated on the harm of Black bodies or other people of color.  To commemorate this, it is important to first understand that the enslavement of Africans predates 1619, as the Portuguese, Spanish, and the Dutch had driven the slave trade since the late 1400s. The oldest slave castle in the world ”“ Elmina off of the coast of Ghana - was built in 1482 by the Portuguese and started being used for slavery shortly after 1492. Enslaved Africans were sent to Europe, the [...]
Holmes asks: Will you make a phone call?
By Tesha M. Christensen At 14, Trinidad Flores was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which an enlarged heart struggles to pump blood. His mom, Little Earth”™s Cassandra Holmes, watched him endure three surgeries and a failed heart transplant before he died in 2013 at age 16. Now she”™s leading a charge to decrease the pollution in South Minneapolis. She doesn”™t want to see any more neighborhood babies born in need of breathing tubes, or young people who”™ve succumbed to asthma and diabetes. During a community meeting about the Roof Depot site off Hiawatha and 28th St. on June 17, 2019 at the East Phillips Recreation and Cultural Center, Holmes walked through the crowd holding up maps that show how many kids in the neighborhood have been treated for lead poisoning, how many have visited the emergency room because of asthma attacks, and how many have dealt with arsenic poisoning. For every 10,000 [...]
