• Twitter thread on #Juneteenth. Text below: Today, as @DukeU pauses to reflect upon #Juneteenth, a traditional holiday commemorating the end of the slavery in the United States, we are thinking about the Tulsa Massacre. Tulsa was the site of a 1921 white supremacist attack on the Black community of Greenwood, a thriving business district commonly known as Black Wall Street. A white mob destroyed 35 city blocks and killed up to 300 Black people, injuring many more. Until relatively recently, many Americans did not know about the Tulsa Massacre. When the 2019 HBO series Watchmen opened with the event, audiences were startled to discover that this was not fiction, but a major historical event they'd never heard of. Our namesake, John Hope Franklin, was aware of the massacre - not simply because he was a preeminent scholar whose research on African American history was foundational to the field, but because his father was there when it happened. Buck Colbert Franklin wrote an eyewitness account of the Tulsa Massacre, of watching planes dive-bomb Greenwood, setting buildings on fire: “‘Where oh where is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations?’ I asked myself. ‘Is the city in conspiracy with the mob?’” The Tulsa massacre is one of countless instances in American history that prove that the oppression of Black Americans did not end along with the abolition of slavery. In fact, since the #13th Amendment contains an exception, some argue that it never ended at all. Juneteenth celebrates the moment when the news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the last of the Black Americans to hear about it. This symbolizes the moment when the gap between proclamation and reality, between what should be and what is, is finally closed. Today we are painfully aware that we have not yet closed this gap. We have not yet fulfilled America’s founding promise of equality, which, as Nikole Hannah-Jones writes, Black Americans have always fought to make true. Today we reflect upon Juneteenth not just as a celebration from the past, but as an aspiration for the future. Of looking ahead towards the moment in which that promise of equality is fulfilled.
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    Twitter thread on #Juneteenth. Text below: Today, as @DukeU pauses to reflect upon #Juneteenth, a traditional holiday commemorating the end of the slavery in the United States, we are thinking about the Tulsa Massacre. Tulsa was the site of a 1921 white supremacist attack on the Black community of Greenwood, a thriving business district commonly known as Black Wall Street. A white mob destroyed 35 city blocks and killed up to 300 Black people, injuring many more. Until relatively recently, many Americans did not know about the Tulsa Massacre. When the 2019 HBO series Watchmen opened with the event, audiences were startled to discover that this was not fiction, but a major historical event they'd never heard of. Our namesake, John Hope Franklin, was aware of the massacre - not simply because he was a preeminent scholar whose research on African American history was foundational to the field, but because his father was there when it happened. Buck Colbert Franklin wrote an eyewitness account of the Tulsa Massacre, of watching planes dive-bomb Greenwood, setting buildings on fire: “‘Where oh where is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations?’ I asked myself. ‘Is the city in conspiracy with the mob?’” The Tulsa massacre is one of countless instances in American history that prove that the oppression of Black Americans did not end along with the abolition of slavery. In fact, since the #13th Amendment contains an exception, some argue that it never ended at all. Juneteenth celebrates the moment when the news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the last of the Black Americans to hear about it. This symbolizes the moment when the gap between proclamation and reality, between what should be and what is, is finally closed. Today we are painfully aware that we have not yet closed this gap. We have not yet fulfilled America’s founding promise of equality, which, as Nikole Hannah-Jones writes, Black Americans have always fought to make true. Today we reflect upon Juneteenth not just as a celebration from the past, but as an aspiration for the future. Of looking ahead towards the moment in which that promise of equality is fulfilled.
  • Read a statement by Franklin Humanities Institute Director Ranjana Khanna on the singularity of this moment and how the humanities can help us to understand it on our website (link in bio).
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    Read a statement by Franklin Humanities Institute Director Ranjana Khanna on the singularity of this moment and how the humanities can help us to understand it on our website (link in bio).
  • Story+, our six-week humanities research program, starts TODAY! @dukeuniversity students have the opportunity to conduct intensive humanities research projects through this innovative online iteration of the @dukestoryplus program, with full support from @dukegradschool mentors, @dukelibraries resources, and the program co-directors! We're looking forward to seeing what our students produce over the next six weeks! Photo by @ericbarstow. #DukeHumanities #DukeStudents #DukeSummer #InterdisciplinaryDuke @dukebassconnections @dukearts
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    Story+, our six-week humanities research program, starts TODAY! @dukeuniversity students have the opportunity to conduct intensive humanities research projects through this innovative online iteration of the @dukestoryplus program, with full support from @dukegradschool mentors, @dukelibraries resources, and the program co-directors! We're looking forward to seeing what our students produce over the next six weeks! Photo by @ericbarstow. #DukeHumanities #DukeStudents #DukeSummer #InterdisciplinaryDuke @dukebassconnections @dukearts
  • In partnership with @dukeuniversity Office of Global Affairs, we are excited to announce two new humanities laboratories - the Amazon Humanities Lab and the Manuscript Migration Lab! Visit our website to learn more about these innovative interdisciplinary projects, and read what their co-directors say about why they are so timely and important. #DukeHumanities
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    In partnership with @dukeuniversity Office of Global Affairs, we are excited to announce two new humanities laboratories - the Amazon Humanities Lab and the Manuscript Migration Lab! Visit our website to learn more about these innovative interdisciplinary projects, and read what their co-directors say about why they are so timely and important. #DukeHumanities