In honor of America turning 250, The Slice News is offering two and a half centuries worth of history in an 16 week series. To promote learning and academic debate the information is presented as flashes of facts that can be explored. It is our intention to educate, empower and help heal the hurt of racissm that lingers from the past.
Introduction
As the nation begins its countdown to America’s 250th birthday, this moment offers an opportunity not just to celebrate the country’s past, but to reflect honestly on who built it, shaped it, and expanded its promise. Blacks Paving America at 250 and Beyond is a new historical series dedicated to illuminating the undeniable role African Americans have played in defining the contours of the United States from its earliest days to the present.
This project is rooted in a simple truth: Black Americans have always belonged here, bit have psychologically struggled with a sense of owning and belonging in a place where rejection and inferiority were systematically engrained. Many Blacks lack the sense of ownership and patriotism in their own homeland. Their labor, creativity, intellect, resistance, and patriotism have been foundational to the nation’s growth. The Black National Anthem "Lift Every Voice And Sing" captures this journey with the enduring line, “stony the road we trod,” a reminder that the path has been difficult, but that road has been paved with perseverance and collective strength that remains beneficial to the nation.
Yet even today, African Americans are too often stereotyped, marginalized, or treated as outsiders in the "house" they helped build. The importance of Blacks in America is an inescapable fact. Enslaved Africans were the literal and figurative economic engine of a young republic, generating the wealth that propelled the United States onto the world stage. And across every era, Black Americans have fought with arms, their feet or their personal convictions, to push the nation closer to its ideals of freedom and equality.
This series celebrates that legacy. It highlights the people, movements, innovations, and acts of courage that have shaped America’s evolution. It affirms that Black history is not a footnote to American history—it is one of its central pillars. And as the country approaches 250 years, it is time to honor the full truth of that story.
American history as it stands has been contorted and distorted by both misinformation and disinformation. Rights and privileges for all that were made available by the sacrifices of Black ancestors are taken for granted. Younger, more ethnically diverse populations in the country seem willing to dismiss inequality as a past problem...It is our duty to keep an honest record. If you do not know history you are prone to repeat it. Further, there is a clash between native born Black migrants from the African diaspora that further challenges relationships and status. This turn is related to a deficit in historical knowledge that the Paving America series hopes to remedy. This series is commitment to shifting damaging mentalities that continue to disjoin people of African descent in America. We hope to eliminate the identity crisis that is rooted in slavery to bring about healing in the years to come in an increasingly diverse America.