Like you, I knew much of what she wrote, but didn't know a lot of it as well. I'm looking forward to reading through the rest of this, along with subsequently checking out everything else that has been and will be recommended in this post (which hopefully gets more traction as more and more people read through the entirety of the project) relative to Reconstruction and beyond.

There are so many important parts of that essay. The explanation for why the "end of slavery" wasn't really the end of anything, how every fresh start for black people in America was cut short by racist white people, how current black culture was born out of the need of enslaved and oppressed black people to express themselves as the human beings they were and are, the explanation of why and how the oppressed black communities created blues, jazz, hip-hop, and black art in general, etc. etc. etc. It's like she took each repugnantcan racist talking point ("why do *they* dress like that ?" and that type of bullshit) and addressed them head on one by one. Including this critical summation:

"For centuries, white Americans
have been trying to solve the
‘‘Negro problem.’’ They have dedicated
thousands of pages to this
endeavor. It is common, still, to
point to rates of black poverty, outof-
wedlock births, crime and college
attendance, as if these conditions in
a country built on a racial caste system
are not utterly predictable. But
crucially, you cannot view those statistics
while ignoring another: that
black people were enslaved here
longer than we have been free."

What a shithole country we've lived in. I'll never understand my people's penchant for racism.