Philip Marcelo

February 22, 2022

BOSTON (AP) — America’s first newspaper dedicated to ending slavery is being resurrected and reimagined more than two centuries later as the nation continues to grapple with its legacy of racism.

The revived version of The Emancipator is a joint effort by Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research and The Boston Globe’s Opinion team that’s expected to launch in the coming months.

Deborah Douglas and Amber Payne, co-editors-in-chief of the new online publication, say it will feature written and video opinion pieces, multimedia series, virtual talks and other content by respected scholars and seasoned journalists. The goal, they say, is to “reframe” the national conversation around racial injustice.

“I like to say it’s anti-racism, every day, on purpose,” said Douglas, who joined the project after working as a journalism professor at DePauw University in Indiana. “We are targeting anyone who wants to be a part of the solution to creating an anti-racist society because we think that leads us to our true north, which is democracy.”

The original Emancipator was founded in 1820 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by iron manufacturer Elihu Embree, with the stated purpose to “advocate the abolition of slavery and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject,” according to a digital collection of the monthly newsletter at the University of Tennessee library.

Before Embree’s untimely death from a fever ended its brief run later that year, The Emancipator reached a circulation of more than 2,000, with copies distributed throughout the South and in northern cities like Boston and Philadelphia that were centers of the abolition movement.

Douglas and Payne say drawing on the paper’s legacy is appropriate now because it was likely difficult for Americans to envision a country without slavery back then, just as many people today likely can’t imagine a nation without racism. The new Emancipator was announced last March, nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020 sparked social justice movements worldwide.

“Those abolitionists were considered radical and extreme,” Douglas said. “But that’s part of our job as journalists — providing those tools, those perspectives that can help them imagine a different world.”

Other projects have also recently come online taking the mantle of abolitionist newspapers, including The North Star, a media site launched in 2019 by civil rights activist Shaun King and journalist Benjamin Dixon that’s billed as a revival of Frederick Douglass’ influential anti-slavery newspaper.

Douglas said The Emancipator, which is free to the public and primarily funded through philanthropic donations, will stand out because of its focus on incisive commentary and rigorous academic work. The publication’s staff, once it’s ramped up, will largely eschew the typical quick turnaround, breaking news coverage, she said.

“This is really deep reporting, deep research and deep analysis that’s scholarly driven but written at a level that everyone can understand,” Douglas said. “Everybody is invited to this conversation. We want it to be accessible, digestible and, hopefully, actionable.”

The publication also hopes to serve as a bulwark against racist misinformation, with truth-telling explanatory videos and articles, she added. It’ll take a critical look at popular culture, film, music and television and, as the pandemic eases, look to host live events around Boston.

“Every time someone twists words, issues, situations or experiences, we want to be there like whack-a-mole, whacking it down with the facts and the context,” Douglas said.

Another critical focus of the publication will be spotlighting solutions to some of the nation’s most intractable racial problems, added Payne, who joined the project after working as a managing editor at BET.com and an executive producer at Teen Vogue.

“There are community groups, advocates and legislators who are really taking matters into their own hands so how do we amplify those solutions and get those stories told?” she said. “At the academic level, there’s so much scholarly research that just doesn’t fit into a neat, 800-word Washington Post op-ed. It requires more excavation. It requires maybe a multimedia series. Maybe it needs a video. So we think that we are really uniquely positioned.”

The project has already posted a couple of representative pieces. To mark the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, The Emancipator published an interview with a Harvard social justice professor and commentary from a Boston College poetry professor.

It also posted on social media a video featuring Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of BU’s anti-racism center and author of “How to be an Antiracist,” reflecting on white supremacy. Kendi co-founded the project with Bina Venkataraman, editor-at-large at The Boston Globe.

And while the new Emancipator is primarily focused on the Black community, Douglas and Payne stress it will also tackle issues facing other communities of color, such as the rise in anti-Asian hate during the global coronavirus pandemic.

They argue The Emancipator’s mission is all the more critical now as the debate over how racism is taught has made schools the latest political battleground.

“Our country is so polarized that partisanship is trumping science and trumping historical records,” Payne said. “These ongoing crusades against affirmative action, against critical race theory are not going away. That drumbeat is continuing and so therefore our drumbeat needs to continue.”

NEW ORLEANS – For a Ukrainian maritime worker stuck on his vessel anchored in the Mississippi River, there is already the feeling of a man without a country. His ship arrived this week at the Port of New Orleans, and his work on the large tanker is finished. But, with a war raging 6,000 miles away in Ukraine and air travel halted, he worries he can’t get back to his home country.

He sought advice from Edward Hayes, the Honorary Consul of Ukraine to Louisiana, who shared the story as one of several he’s heard from Ukrainians as the conflict with Russia has intensified. “He sent me a panicked email … He didn’t know what he was going to do or where he would stay. He’s very concerned he won’t be able to go home because of the war,” Hayes told the PBS NewsHour. “He’s in a tough spot and didn’t know if he should seek refugee status. So he’s asked me for humanitarian aid and asked me to reach out to the Ukrainian Embassy to see if he could ever go home.”

Hayes has been screening this kind of problem for weeks now. The Consul’s office in the city is commissioned through the United States Department of State. It represents the interest of Ukraine for the local community in New Orleans, much like an embassy. Hayes offers help to local Ukrainians, estimated to be in the thousands, with everything from visas to legal assistance. Along with Ukrainians who live in the area permanently, there is also a diaspora community that includes maritime workers who regularly work on ships that pass through the state’s ports along with workers on temporary visas.

Several weeks ago, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict intensified, he said another Ukrainian contacted the office to get help to leave New Orleans and travel to his country to fight. He wonders what will become of the man as he waits for word about what happened.

“It really hits me hard when you listen to a young man’s story who may not come back,” he said. “He may be going back to his death. Those are the stories on a human level that are really difficult.”

Ukrainians across the country and the world are sharing these fears and uncertainty as Russian troops advance farther toward the capital of Kyiv. The human toll of the war troubles the Fielkow family in New Orleans, too. In 2007, Arnie Fielkow and his wife, Susan, adopted two girls, then aged 2 and 5, from a Ukrainian orphanage. Since then, the couple’s affection and connection to Ukraine have grown. The breaking news alerts have been unbelievable.

“It’s a heartbreaking situation to see the events that are unfolding in Ukraine. I feel so bad for the Ukrainian people and, candidly, angry at Putin and the Russian Federation. There is truly no need for the type of aggression that we are witnessing,” Arnie Fielkow, a former New Orleans Saints executive and city council member, told the NewsHour. “From the beginning, we took a love for Ukraine. We have seen that they were very proud of their heritage and history and very kind people. We’ve since gone back a couple of times and visited. But sadly, we’ve seen the distress that Russia has caused all of these areas.”

The Fielkow daughters are now 20 and 17 years old. Yana, the eldest, was in her college Russian class as the news was developing Thursday morning. After an exhaustive search, the daughters were only recently connected with their two sisters who remain in Ukraine. The bonds have grown and now the worry grows.

“I am feeling very distressed, very depressed, and very worried for not only my sisters in Ukraine but also the whole country,” Yana Fielkow texted the NewsHour. “I love Ukraine and am very proud of my country so hearing and reading the news just makes me cry. I haven’t been able to think about anything other than my sisters and their safety and I am just praying that they will be okay.”

“To watch tanks rolling into Ukrainian cities and Russian airplanes in Ukrainian airspace is truly heartbreaking. Anyone that is watching can see thousands of people sheltering in subway tunnels,” Arnie Fielkow said. “It is a scene almost out of WWII in London. People are hiding in the underground in order to avoid a full-fledge attack and bombing. It is almost unbelievable.”

Fielkow is concerned thinking about how far the war will go. As his daughters have grown older, “ you can see their connection to their country.”

The family says some fighting has spread to their siblings’ home in Western Ukraine in Khmelnytskyi.

“We talked to the older sisters in Ukraine via video chat on Friday. They are hiding in their basements with their children. The husbands are conscripted to military duty and everyone is scared out of their minds,” the girls’ mother, Dr. Susan Fielkow, told the Newshour. “There seems to be nothing we can do to help them right now. Arnie and I were trying to get them to go to the Slovakian border because we’re planning to fly to Europe to meet them, but they cannot even leave their homes. There is bombing everywhere.”

The family also worries about a looming refugee crisis. Neighboring countries are preparing for the possibility that the war will send Ukrainians flooding their way. Pentagon officials estimate that a nationwide attack on Ukraine by Russian troops could result in 1 to 5 million refugees.

”I think the connection to their sisters has really brought it home in a human way,” Fielkow said. “Will it be over in a day or is this going to be weeks and months? What is the ultimate aim of the Russians? We’re watching like everyone else and not sure what the endgame will be.”

The New Orleans Russian Community Center released a statement saying, “We’re deeply shaken and saddened by the Russian invasion into Ukraine. None of the civilian population wants this war. Our people, Ukrainians and Russians have always been closely connected with each other. Almost every Russian has friends or relatives in Ukraine. This is a big tragedy. We hope and pray that this aggression stops soon and the Ukrainian population returns to their safe state.”

Beyond the intense human suffering, New Orleans and Louisiana have a very real economic stake in the outcome. The fallout from economic sanctions could impact a state that relies heavily on oil and energy from the region. According to the Consul, in Louisiana, Russia exports $2.6 billion in goods and imports the same amount, making Russia the largest importer of goods in the state. The vast majority of imports from Russia are oil and gas.

Likewise, the Consul predicts the conflict and sanctions will impact its ability to help companies in Ukraine do business in Louisiana and vice versa. Hayes said Louisiana imported $28.5 million in goods from Ukraine in 2018, making Louisiana Ukraine’s 10th largest trading partner in the U.S. that year.

“We need to take serious action to make the Russian economy and the leadership feel some significant pain. Some of the actions will cause pain in the United States. It could hurt local refineries and other businesses; we have to be willing to accept certain sacrifices to protect and promote democracy,” Hayes said.

Leo Krasnozhon grew up in Kharkiv, a Ukrainian town 60 miles from the Russian border, and moved to New Orleans in 2003. On Thursday, he awoke to the news that his hometown was under attack and Russian tanks had reached the area, putting childhood friends and college classmates in harm’s way.

“It is very difficult to reach anyone. Everyone is just trying to stay hidden and safe,” Krasnozhon said. “They feel trapped because the situation is out of control. You have a dictator invading a democracy and it feels like we are just going back in time. Unfortunately, it reminds us of the beginning of WWII when dictators attacked democracy.”

Krasnozhon, an economics professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, wonders if the world waited too long and relied too heavily on weak sanctions. He worries that the world order is shifting and generations of work following WWII have been upended. “I’m an economist and I can only say that the economic sanctions failed to work. They didn’t stop the invasion. Now democracies need to stick together to stop it quickly,” Krasnozhon said.

“My friends are stuck. Ukraine is surrounded and some of my friends are staying in Ukraine because they don’t have the ability to leave and everyone believed until the last moment that Russia would not start the war. They feel like they are on their own in an unfair situation.”

For now, many who have ties to Ukraine, like the Fielkows, watch and worry about friends and family while wondering if a peaceful solution is now far from reach.“We are sitting here watching it all unfold on social media and television while it seems like so little is being done to punish Putin and the Russian Federation. I’m hoping that will change,” Fielkow said. “I find it very difficult to believe that the rest of the world is standing by today and watching while the Ukrainian people in multiple cities are being attacked by the Russians. It’s unfathomable and very distressing.”

Roby Chavez is a Communities Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour out of New Orleans. @RobyChavez_504

WASHINGTON, DC (2/23/2022) - The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.

I will be monitoring the situation from the White House this evening and will continue to get regular updates from my national security team. Tomorrow, I will meet with my G7 counterparts in the morning and then speak to the American people to announce the further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for this needless act of aggression against Ukraine and global peace and security. We will also coordinate with our NATO Allies to ensure a strong, united response that deters any aggression against the Alliance. Tonight, Jill and I are praying for the brave and proud people of Ukraine.

NEW ORLEANS (2/9/2022) - The University of New Orleans has entered into a formal partnership with the National Coalition of 100 Black Women - Greater New Orleans Chapter, Inc. in an effort to further strengthen both organizations by providing opportunities to students, members and employees. Members of NCBW chapters work to address common issues within their communities, families and personal lives while promoting gender and racial equality.

UNO President John Nicklow and Lanissa Grogan Stewart, president of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women - Greater New Orleans Chapter, Inc., took part in a signing ceremony today on the UNO campus.

“We are extremely proud to collaborate with the local chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women,” Nicklow said. “Diversity, equity and inclusion are core values at our University, and we look forward to putting those values into action by working together with this well-established nonprofit organization to create synergies for the benefit of our university and our community.”

“Given that our organization’s mission is to advocate on behalf of Black women and girls to promote leadership development and gender equity in the areas of health, education and economic development, we are mindful of the need to create and foster partnerships like this,” Grogan Stewart said. “And we are honored to form this partnership with UNO.”

UNO and the NCBW-GNO will collaborate on initiatives that are directly related to their shared commitment to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion. They will engage in equity-minded programming and activities that enhance educational access and success of students in greater New Orleans, particularly Black women. The partnership will allow the chapter to hold events on the UNO campus, and both organizations will share expertise in meeting community needs and tap into mentorship networks that benefit students, faculty, staff and chapter members.

Founded in 1970, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women has thousands of members with chapters in 25 states and the District of Columbia with the purpose of meeting the needs of its members and empowering Black women. The Greater New Orleans chapter was chartered in 1988.

Members of the Greater New Orleans Chapter implement annual programs that: provide an effective network among Black women; utilize the tools of role modeling and mentoring to provide meaningful guidance to young women; stress leadership development; make Black women a viable force in the socioeconomic and political arenas; explore and sustain new career opportunities; and recognize the historic and current achievements of Black women.

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