From a Usable Past to a Collaborative Future: African American Culture in the Age of Computational Thinking

Pearson, Kim, Black History Bulletin

On February 12, 1909, on the centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, a biracial group of intellectuals and human rights activists issued a call for the establishment of a movement committed to justice and equality for all American citizens. The organization they created, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, mounted a decades-long legal assault on Jim Crow, culminating in the US Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal.

Equally important, the NAACP's director of Publicity of Research, protean scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois, published Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races. At its height during the first decades of the 20th century, Crisis was one of the most influential magazines in the nation. During a time that was increasingly becoming known as the American Century, writers of the Crisis explained to its readers that the realization of America's possibilities depended upon justice for Africa and her descendants in the United States and around the globe. Not just Africa--but India, China, and all of the colonized peoples of the world.

Du Bois used the magazine to expose the links between slavery and colonialism. Along with articles and photo galleries documenting black people's accomplishments …

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Publication information: Article title: From a Usable Past to a Collaborative Future: African American Culture in the Age of Computational Thinking. Contributors: Pearson, Kim - Author. Magazine title: Black History Bulletin. Volume: 72. Issue: 1 Publication date: Spring 2009. Page number: 41+. © 2007 Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale Group.

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