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This Week in People’s History, Sept. 12–18

Newspaper headline: Florida Deaths Mounting
Deadly hurricane in 1928. Slave-catchers stymied (1858). Feds' forgeries flop (1918). Deadly racist church bombing (1963). Settlers take over Cherokee Strip (1893). Thin-skinned cops get served (1994). Eugene Debs speaks truth to power (1918).

The Movement and the Mayor

Jesse Sharkey Hammer and Hope
What does it mean to have Brandon Johnson, a Chicago Teachers Union organizer, in office?

Ships Going Out

James Oakes The New York Review
In American Slavers, Sean M. Kelley surveys the relatively unknown history of Americans who traded in slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Black Working Class Can No Longer Be Ignored

Akil Vicks Jacobin
Across the political spectrum, Americans whitewash the working class and exclude labor struggle from black history. Blair LM Kelley’s Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class is a necessary corrective — and provides lessons for struggle today

Delegitimize the Court

Elie Mystal, Nikolas Bowie, Rhiannon Hamam The Nation
On the final episode of Contempt of Court, Elie Mystal is joined by legal experts Nikolas Bowie and Rhiannon Hamam to understand how we might strip the court of its presumed legitimacy.