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When ancestry tests reveal more than genetics

Special correspondent Lee Hawkins shares his experience finding new family with online genetics tests — and reconciling fraught history.
"The truth is, we can't really change the past, but we can affect the present and the future," says Lee Hawkins, who learned from a genetics test that nearly a fifth of his DNA is from Wales.
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When confronting your family history means making slavery reparations

Jul 4, 2024
After Lotte Lieb Dula discovered her family connection to slavery, she crafted an online guide to reparations and racial healing.
Above, signs at a 2002 rally in support of reparations for slavery. Decades later, some progress has been made in implementing reparations in states and localities.
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If reparations aren't politically viable, what's the next best thing?

Jan 5, 2024
Scholars say local action directed at improving access to housing, health care and education are more likely to pass than cash payments.
Many Black families were excluded from suburbs that were rapidly growing in the '50s and '60s.
Illustration: Dylan Miettinen/Marketplace | Photo: Courtesy USC Libraries. “Dick” Whittington Photography Collection

California debates who should be eligible for reparations for slavery

Jan 4, 2024
Recommendations start "with those folks who are clearly descendants of 250 years of wage theft in this country," says Sen. Steven Bradford.
Illustration: Dylan Miettinen/Marketplace | Photos: filo and JasonDoiy/Getty Images

2024 will be a big year for the reparations debate in California

Jan 3, 2024
After a state task force issued a nearly 1,100-page report in 2023, lawmakers are starting to look at reparations policy options.
California State Sen. Steven Bradford is one of nine task force members who issued a report on reparations last year.
Illustration: Dylan Miettinen/Marketplace | Photo: Courtesy California State Senate

The tipped minimum wage has origins in slavery

And that legacy means a worker can be paid as little as $2.13 an hour at the federal level.
Nikola Stojadinovic via Getty Images

4 states just voted to close a loophole that allowed slavery as punishment for a crime

Nov 10, 2022
But that might not change the way prisons use inmates as labor.
There were still a few states that utilized slavery and indentured servitude as punishment for crimes.
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Slavery ended in the 1860s. Why hasn't the wealth gap closed for Black Americans?

Jun 20, 2022
Juneteenth commemorates Black Americans' emancipation from slavery, yet their economic emancipation continues.
Demonstrators marched Friday in Newark, New Jersey, to celebrate Juneteenth and demand reparations for Black Americans. Structural and legal barriers have limited Black people's opportunities to build wealth.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Here's how companies are observing Juneteenth this year

Jun 19, 2020
Juneteenth dates back to 1865, and it is a celebration specifically of the end of slavery in Texas, which was one of the last holdouts.
This is not a new holiday. But with the conversation we’re having now about racial injustice and American history, companies are paying attention to it.
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Author Caitlin Rosenthal on the role of slavery in the history of business

Aug 14, 2018
Caitlin Rosenthal, author of "Accounting for Slavery," discusses the role slavery plays in the history of business.
Stereograph Cards Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.