Black History Month series digs into race, inequality and injustice

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - During February, Black History Month, 19 News will dig into a difficult history to hopefully shed light on our past, present and our future.

You’ll hear words including slavery, racism and white supremacy. You’ll also hear the words truth, resilience and hope.

Black people should watch this series because it will help us understand why we think and act the way we do and how race still plays a major role in our lives.

White people should care about this series because it will help you understand your role, even in 2020, the way you think about and react to people of color.

In August of 2019, America marked 400 years since Africans were kidnapped and landed in Virginia.

You say, 400 years is a long time ago. That’s history. Why are we still talking about slavery?

The question is: have we really talked about what some call America’s original sin? Do people really know the history?

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 a study showed schools are failing to teach the hard history of African enslavement.

How much do you know about slavery? Take a 6-question quiz.

In August 2019, The New York Times released The 1619 Project. The 96-page magazine contains more than 80 pages of historical essays and articles examining contemporary life and its connection to slavery.

From slavery, are there still effects that remain: from the way African Americans are policed to how black students are educated?

“The Vestiges of Slavery” is going to make some people very uncomfortable. It will be An Inconvenient Truth. For some it will educate; for others, it will anger.

There have been 400 hundred of years of denial, subjugation, segregation and racism that have impacted America’s people of color. This is our attempt to help all of us understand and appreciate what was done by whom, to the benefit of whom, and to the detriment of whom.

A team of 19 News reporters talked with several members of the Cleveland community and beyond for the series of reports from the unresolved trauma in the black community to policing to educating to what’s next for America and the black community.

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