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Axios
2 days ago
- General
- Axios
Websites expand ancestry records of enslaved people
Two genealogy sites are adding troves of historical materials about enslaved people in the U.S. to databases, which could give many of their descendants a fuller picture of their families' histories. The moves come as the nation on Thursday celebrates Juneteenth, the annual celebration of the end of slavery. Why it matters: In recent years, descendants of enslaved people have gained unprecedented access to collections of long-lost family records online — made possible by advances in technology, AI, and DNA testing. The big picture: A growing number of Black Americans are tracing how their families were torn apart, received Anglo names and sold across the country because of slavery, which began in the British colonies more than 400 years ago and officially ended with the 13th Amendment in 1865. They're also learning about how some relatives escaped slavery and what their lives were like in the aftermath of emancipation. Driving the news: announced last week that it will significantly expand its free Articles of Enslavement records collection — an archive of newspaper articles documenting the experiences of enslaved people in the U.S. The website is expanding its archive nearly fourfold, using proprietary AI models and machine learning to index 110,000 newly discovered articles that reference more than half a million people. Many of the original newspaper articles contain never-before-seen information about enslaved people in communities where courthouse and community records were otherwise destroyed or lost. How it works: Users can visit Ancestry's expanded landing page dedicated to enslavement records and search by name or explore a state with the most records. AI will comb through the once-hard-to-search data for names of enslaved people, connecting names in Ancestry's other databases of public documents to piece together puzzles. Zoom in: Michigan State University announced this week it's publishing new data on its "Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade" website, That's a project in partnership with other organizations, such as FamilySearch International, that documents the lives of enslaved people of African descent. The latest data release makes information regarding 2 million Black Americans born before emancipation in the 1900 Census available for discovery and download. The expanded dataset will significantly aid researchers' ability to identify formerly enslaved people and their families for academic study, the university said. What they're saying: "Tracing people from the era of enslavement into the generations that followed emancipation presents exceptional challenges to descendants and researchers," Walter Hawthorne, an MSU history professor and head of the project, said in a statement. That's because managing databases across multiple sites remains challenging, along with ensuring the long-term preservation of projects and resources, MSU said. "The details of these records can lead to key breakthroughs in helping descendants of previously enslaved people in the U.S. make discoveries about their families prior to 1870," Nicka Sewell-Smith, Ancestry's senior story producer and genealogist, said in an announcement. State of play: Juneteenth celebrations began in Texas, and commemorate June 19, 1865 — the day Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed by President Lincoln more than two years earlier.
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Why ‘monstrify'? Look at who benefits when few are considered fully human
In March, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, allegedly for membership in the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, these men were 'terrorists' and 'heinous monsters.' President Trump echoed her, calling them 'monsters' on his social media platform, Truth Social. In May, ProPublica reported that the White House knew that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S., and earlier reporting indicated that more than 50 of them had entered the U.S. legally and had not violated immigration law. 'Monster' conjures a threat distinct from 'foreign,' 'different,' 'other' or even 'alien.' Here it implies that the deportees are different from 'normal' people (read 'white, Anglo, native-born Americans') in ways that go beyond merely committing a garden-variety crime. Their transgression of the social contract seemingly even exceeds the violent crimes of which they are accused, because U.S. citizens suspected of being 'rapists, murders, kidnappers' — the administration's allegations about these 'monsters' — don't get trafficked to gulags overseas. Monstrifying these people was part of a strategy to justify deporting them by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without proof of any crime or gang membership. By doing so the administration threatens to normalize not just the deportation of a handful of individuals but also depriving all residents (legal and undocumented) and U.S. citizens of the right to challenge the legality of their detention or imprisonment. Because one cannot prove legal residence or citizenship without due process, deporting people without legal proceedings is to deny rights that must be extended to all if they are to exist for anyone — a violation all the greater when individuals are sent to a prison from which, in the words of the Salvadoran president, 'the only way out is in a coffin.' Monstrifying individuals and groups is nothing new. The 11th-century chronicler Gerald of Wales, descended from Norman conquerers and Welsh nobility, dismissed the English as 'the most worthless of all peoples under heaven … the most abject slaves' and Ireland as an island inhabited by werewolves, ox-humans and other human-animal hybrids. In 1625, an English Puritan travel editor published a claim (without having set foot in North America) that the Algonquians had 'little of humanitie but shape … more brutish than the beasts they hunt.' In 1558, the Scottish Protestant and firebrand preacher John Knox published a pamphlet against the rule of Mary I of England, arguing that a woman who ruled in her own right was 'a monster of monsters,' her country a monstrous body politic, unlikely to survive for long. In the age of Atlantic slavery, legal instruments known as 'black codes' invented Black Africans transported to the colonies as a new category: the chattel slave who served for life and had fewer rights than white Christian servants. The current president's history of monstrifying people extends to U.S. citizens. In August 2016, Trump called Hillary Clinton 'a monster': supposedly 'weak,' 'unhinged,' 'unbalanced,' someone who would be 'a disaster' as president and who allegedly threatened 'the destruction of this country from within.' In October 2020, Trump twice called Kamala Harris 'this monster.' The distinctions drawn by people in power trying to divide a population are often unworkable. How do you tell a law-abiding person from a terrorist gang member? From their tattoos, according to this administration. Neither citizenship nor immigration status is visible on a person's body or audible in their voice, yet people of color of every immigration and citizenship status have long faced racial profiling. Attempts to define visible signs of the monster are not new either; nor is the fact that monster-making sweeps up an immense number of people in its dragnet. But monsters are never hermetically sealed from the group whose borders they were invented to define. This ham-fisted attempt at an evidence-based reason for trafficking people to El Salvador echoes earlier attempts to identify distinct groups in a population where human variety existed on a continuum. Notorious among these examples was the monstrification and mass slaughter, in Nazi Germany, of Jewish, Roma, Sinti, LGBTQ+, disabled and neurodiverse individuals as well as political dissidents. In the U.S. today, to tolerate, permit or encourage the monstrification of any non-citizen and consequently deny them due process is to tolerate, permit and encourage this to happen to U.S. citizens. The category of the human is shrinking as politicians, tech bros and right-wing pundits monstrify everyone who isn't a cis-het white man. Today's dehumanizing language extends beyond the Venezuelan deportees that this administration labeled as 'monsters.' It extends to women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people by questioning their right to bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity. It extends to people who are unhoused, poor, disabled or elderly, as social services are cut. These narratives hail back to a broader, centuries-long Western tradition of gazing at other people and framing them as monstrous: as beings who supposedly broke the category of 'human' and could be legitimately denied of fundamental rights. Monster-making campaigns always serve a purpose. For European colonizers, claiming that Indigenous people were less than human disguised European land grabs. Laws defining enslaved Black Africans as chattel property legalized their enslavement and broke the labor solidarity between white servants and enslaved Africans. And the Nazis claimed that Jews and other minorities had caused Germany to lose the First World War and were responsible for the nation's economic collapse. Again today, the goals of monstrification serve the myth of white supremacy, including the notion that the U.S. was meant to be a white ethnostate. Thus while the Trump administration terminated a program for refugees fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it welcomed white Afrikaners from South Africa by calling them refugees. Furthermore, by exploiting Jews' proximity to whiteness, this administration is monstrifying Palestinians in order to justify the Israeli government's human rights violations. By declaring that protesters, including those who are Jewish, calling for an end to the Gaza slaughter are antisemitic, and by withholding research funds from and interfering with universities by calling them hotbeds of antisemitism, the administration attempts to convince people that Palestinian civilians do not deserve food, homes, safety or even life — and that recognizing the humanity of Jews requires denying that Palestinians are human and have human rights. Yet the administration's own antisemitism is clear: Trump has pardoned leaders of antisemitic and white supremacist organizations and hosted prominent antisemites as dinner guests. This multi-pronged campaign of monstrification strengthens the personal loyalty of white supremacists and Christian nationalists towards Trump and sows discord and poisons solidarity among his targets and critics. Monstrifying narratives have been undermining the possibility of a more inclusive body politic for millennia. But there's an antidote to us-them messages of hate, fear and exclusion that claim that only a tiny minority of people are truly human. That antidote is to realize that by recognizing the humanity of others we don't disavow our own humanity: We demonstrate it. It behooves us to demand that all people receive equal protection under the law, and to call out monstrifying narratives that, in the end, dehumanize us all. Surekha Davies is a historian, speaker and monster consultant for TV, film and radio. She is the author of 'Humans: A Monstrous History' and writes the newsletter 'Strange and Wondrous: Notes From a Science Historian.'
New York Post
10-06-2025
- New York Post
Iconic Italian luxury hotel Il San Pietro di Positano celebrates 55 years
Don't walk through Positano with Carlo Cinque if you're in a rush. Every few feet, shop keepers and hoteliers stop him to chat. Some are his friends, some are his relatives, all of them suggest the tight ties that bind Carlo's family — and its storied hotel, Il San Pietro di Positano — to this idyllic Amalfi Coast town. Just a few weeks shy of its 55th birthday on June 29, Il San Pietro remains possibly the best place to reenact a Slim Aarons photograph, to embrace the fantasy of living Italian life at its most stylish. Advertisement 6 Living is easy at Il San Pietro di Positano, 55 years into the hotel's storied history. Courtesy of Il San Pietro di Positano Hotel 'We are always at our guests' disposal. For us, it's a pleasure to provide everything they need to enjoy their stay,' says Cinque, 60. Named for his late great uncle, founder of the iconic luxury property, Cinque co-owns the hotel with his brother, Vito, 57. Their mother Virginia, 90, still lives on property, greeting guests during her daily garden walks. Carved into a rocky promontory, the hotel remains an essential stop on the Amalfi Coast. Guests stroll through terraced gardens, fragrant with jasmine and rosemary and abundant with citrus fruit, tomatoes, salad greens, herbs and eggplants. They can take a speedy elevator down to the vermillion-upholstered chaises longues arranged just over the crystalline ocean, and swim or sail in one of the hotel's two custom-built yachts. Exercise options include beachside Pilates, yoga and tennis; overlooking it all is an outdoor gym nestled under a copious lemon arbor and a pool reflecting the azure sky. Among the many delicious lunch options: homemade linguine studded with local lobster and the organic tomatoes grown onsite. Advertisement 6 Positano is now an iconic destination for luxury travel, but this hasn't always been the case. Courtesy of II San Pietro di Positano The Cinque family seems like such obvious arbiters of luxury travel now, but their path was initially seen as a folly. In 1934, 23 year-old Carlino Cinque convinced his dubious father to help him buy land that had been abandoned by locals emigrating to the United States and Argentina. At the time, Positano was a quiet fishing village. 'Everyone said Uncle Carlino was crazy. Why would you start a hotel in a town with no tourism?,' Cinque says. An autodidact who only completed third grade, Carlino Cinque opened the Hotel Miramare in 1934, catering to the fortunate Northern Europeans who wintered in Positano. During World War II, the Miramare housed British generals. Post-war, many of them returned, creating a market for Anglo visitors. Advertisement 6 A Michelin-starred restaurant is among the attractions of the sprawling resort. Stefano Scatà Cinque aspired to greater elegance, and began buying land two kilometers from the town center, on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Salerno. Undeterred by the austere conditions, Cinque envisioned a luxurious resort, a sophisticated getaway that he opened in 1970. In the intervening years, his family added a Michelin-starred restaurant, a seaside tennis court, and a boutique with the silkiest caftans and expertly constructed, hand lined tote bags. 6 Exercise by the ocean is on offer at the hotel's seaside tennis court. Stefano Scatà Advertisement 'Uncle Carlino did all of this without an architect. He had an artist's vision, and he really respected the natural environment. When he built something, he'd go out on the boat and look at it from the water. If it offended the landscape, he would tear it down and rebuild,' Carlo Cinque says. 'It's the complete opposite approach of what anyone else would do to build a new hotel.' Carlino's dreamy nature, his great nephew says, found the perfect foil in his nephew Salvatore and his niece Virginia, both of whom had more pragmatic approaches. Natural hosts and savvy marketers, they excelled in welcoming a-listers like Franco Zefferelli, Brooke Shields, Julia Roberts and Dustin Hoffman, who was so enamored of the vegetable gardens that he took to harvesting his own produce, and joining the kitchen staff for their meals. The Cinques also gave back to the town, creating Positano's annual Sun, Sea and Culture festival in 1992. 6 Il San Pietro Positano says it boasts a 50% return rate among its enchanted guests. Courtesy of Il San Pietro di Positano Hotel Still, they sometimes grapple with being the town being a victim of its success. Positano, with fewer than 4,000 residents, struggles with the mass tourism plaguing so many other stunning Italian towns. A single road connects the town to the rest of the Amalfi coast, with large busses sometimes causing huge delays for motorists, and visitors clogging the picturesque but narrow streets. Guests at Il San Pietro can simply take the 5-minute boat shuttle from the hotel beach to Positano's harbor, avoiding the road traffic, and some opt not to leave at all. With just 55 rooms and suites and 200 staff, the resort feels like a private club, and has a return rate of 50 percent. Ambitious hosts, the Cinques are hardly resting on their considerable laurels: In the past year, they've added the Palazzo Santa Croce, a meticulously restored five-bedroom Baroque Palace, and the two-bedroom Casa Sunrise. They're also planning an indoor pool and an expanded spa at Il San Pietro. 6 The hotel's founder, Carlino Cinque, designed the hotel's additions to complement the area's natural landscape. Courtesy of Il San Pietro di Positano Hotel Advertisement Throughout, the family ethos is central, even defiant in an era when so many luxury properties are part of large international conglomerates. The Cinques are rumored to have rejected repeated offers from Bernard Arnault, a frequent guest. It is difficult to imagine they would ever cede their beloved hotel, so deeply entwined in their identity, or that they would stop being perfectionists. 'When we close for the season, we always work on improving the hotel. We tell our long-term clients that we're going to renovate their rooms, and they say, 'no, for heaven's sake, don't touch my room, it is so beautiful,'' Cinque says. 'Then when they return, they congratulate us, and say, 'but it's much more beautiful than before.''
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Tarrant County sued over new commissioners court map; lawsuit claims racial discrimination
The Brief Tarrant County and Judge Tim O'Hare face a federal lawsuit alleging their new commissioners court map is racially discriminatory. The suit claims the map violates voting rights by concentrating most minority voters into one precinct, diluting their influence elsewhere. The map was approved by a 3-2 vote on Tuesday. TARRANT COUNTY, Texas - A federal lawsuit has been filed against Tarrant County and Judge Tim O'Hare claiming the county's new commissioners court map intentionally discriminates based on race. The lawsuit comes just one day after the Republican-led Commissioners Court approved the new map in a 3-2 vote. The suit claims the new map violates the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The backstory Currently, Tarrant County Commissioners Court consists of Republican County Judge Tim O'Hare, two Republican Commissioners and two Democratic commissioners. Critics of redistricting say the new map increases the chances that at least one of the two Democratic-leaning precincts will flip during the next election. O'Hare told FOX 4 the redistricting effort fulfills a campaign promise to increase the court's Republican majority. "For us not to do that, when we are the controlling party, the majority party, would be foolish on our part, because we know if we lost, they would do the exact same thing," said O'Hare. "Tarrant County is alive and well in terms of being a red county and we intend to keep it that way." Dig deeper The lawsuit says that on April 2, 2025, Tarrant County entered into a contract with the Virginia-based Public Interest Legal Foundation to redraw the districts. According to the suit, the new map packs the bulk of the county's minority voters into one precinct while splitting the others among the three other precincts. "While Map 7 disenfranchises just 5% of Tarrant County's Anglo adults, it disenfranchises 19% of the County's Black adults and 12% of its Latino adults. Black adults are thus four times more likely than Anglo adults to be disenfranchised under Map 7 and Latino adults are over twice as likely to be disenfranchised than Anglo adults," reads the suit. Five Tarrant County voters who are now in new districts were named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The suit claims the Black and Latino voters are disenfranchised because they are now unable to vote for County Commissioner in the Nov. 2026 election. Under the previous map, they would have been able to cast their ballot. Typically, redistricting is done every 10 years after the census. The Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted not to change it after the 2020 census. The suit argues that there was no population imbalance or other reason to require the map change. "Specifically, the plan was drafted and passed in a process designed to be discriminatory, at least in part, to minimize the political power of Black voters and Latino voters by limiting their ability to influence commissioner court elections to a single district out of four when minorities are the majority of residents in the County and just shy of half of eligible voters in Tarrant County," reads the suit. The suit calls to permanently stop Tarrant County from adopting Map 7 and asks for any future maps to go under review in federal court. What they're saying FOX 4 reached out to Chad Ruback, an attorney who is not involved in the case, to get some outside perspective on the situation. While Ruback confirmed that it's legal to redraw district lines for partisan purposes, he also says it will be an uphill battle for the county officials. "On the other hand, it is not appropriate, it is not legal to redistrict for the purpose of diminishing the rights of certain classes of people like minorities," Ruback said. According to the attorney, the county will have to prove that increasing Republican representation is not the sole purpose behind redistricting. "I believe they could prevail if they showed that Judge O'Hare and his Republican colleagues on the commissioners court were motivated to specifically hurt minority votes," he said. The lawsuit attempts to do just that, citing examples of previous statements made by O'Hare, and his actions in previous government positions. However, Ruback says this may not be enough evidence. "If they have some statement made to a news reporter several years ago that sort of kind of might have suggested there might be redistricting, and it might hurt minority votes, that's probably not going to be enough to carry their burden," said Ruback. The other side O'Hare's office sent a statement to FOX 4 in response to the suit. It says, in part: "The refusal of Democrats to accept settled law will waste Tarrant County taxpayer dollars. The commissioners court voted by a 3-2 majority for more Republican representation, which is perfectly legal under all applicable laws of the United States and the state of Texas." What's next According to Ruback, if more lawsuits are filed on the same issue, they'll likely be consolidated to a single case. More evidence may be presented in the current suit, but Ruback says it remains unclear. He said it could be months before a resolution is made in the case. The Source Information in this article comes from a lawsuit filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division and past FOX 4 coverage.
Business of Fashion
05-06-2025
- Business
- Business of Fashion
De Beers Draws Interest From Ex-CEOs as Anglo Starts Sale
Anglo American Plc is about to begin a formal sales process for De Beers, after receiving indications of interest from potential buyers that include two former chief executives of the iconic diamond miner. An exit from De Beers represents the final step in a sweeping restructuring plan outlined by Anglo CEO Duncan Wanblad last year as the company fended off a takeover approach from BHP Group. Anglo has already agreed to sell its coal and nickel mines and unbundled its platinum business this week. Former De Beers bosses Gareth Penny and Bruce Cleaver are both leading groups that are potential buyers, as is Australian mining veteran Michael O'Keeffe, according to people familiar with the matter. Anglo is working with advisers who are preparing to start the process, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Anglo American declined to comment, as did Penny and Cleaver. O'Keeffe could not be reached for comment. Anglo has waited to sell De Beers as the diamond industry grappled with its deepest crisis in decades, after a collapse in Chinese demand and fierce competition from synthetic stones. Anglo wrote down the value of the unit for a second time in February, to about $4.9 billion. Anglo shares rose as much as 4 percent and traded at 2,314 pence by 2:14 p.m. in London. But while prices for rough diamonds have slumped, Anglo's executives still see De Beers as a trophy asset — the company has said it will be patient in finding a buyer and doesn't want to destroy value by moving too quickly. The diamond market is now showing signs of stabilising, although President Donald Trump's trade war has created fresh uncertainty and disruption. Anglo is also examining options for an initial public offering or demerger of De Beers. However, a sale is the preferred and most likely option, the people said. A successful sale of De Beers would mark a significant step forward in Wanblad's efforts to streamline Anglo's business and revive its fortunes after a series of missteps that left the century-old miner vulnerable to BHP's takeover attempt. Cleaver, currently chairman of emerald miner Gemfields Group Ltd., was CEO of De Beers until 2023. He's in the advanced stages of arranging funding for a potential offer, two of the people said. Penny is also a former De Beers CEO, who ran the company when the billionaire Oppenheimer family still owned a stake. He led De Beers through the global financial crisis, when it was forced to shutter mines and tap its shareholders in an emergency rights issue, and is currently chairman of asset manager Ninety One Plc. O'Keeffe is a mining veteran who sold coal producer Riversdale Mining to Rio Tinto Group for $3.7 billion in 2011. He's chairman of Burgundy Diamond Mines Ltd., an Australia-based company which operates the Ekati mine in Canada, once owned by BHP Group. By Thomas Biesheuvel, Dinesh Nair Learn more: De Beers is Closing Its Man-Made Diamond Jewellery Business De Beers is closing its lab-grown diamond jewellery business amid declining synthetic gem values and a company restructuring.
