{"content":[{"text":"Rethinking Capitalization","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.046195,"width":0.16573699999999997,"height":0.015536000000000001}},{"text":"by Nell Irvin Painter","bbox":{"left":0.752719,"top":0.046195,"width":0.13078599999999996,"height":0.015536000000000001}},{"text":"“Rethinking Capitalization” \n By Nell Irvin Painter \n 23 July 2020","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.091765,"width":0.21447899999999998,"height":0.055466}},{"text":"So momentous, so dark yet hopeful, these times have turned our world upside down.","bbox":{"left":0.177425,"top":0.165705,"width":0.67946,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"Police brutality brought into the light. Masses in the streets confronting American history,","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.202674,"width":0.7150890000000001,"height":0.018495999999999985}},{"text":"toppling the Confederacy after years—decades—of well-mannered but vain protest. We are left","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.239644,"width":0.764215,"height":0.018495999999999985}},{"text":"to grapple with the conventions of American public life.","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.276614,"width":0.4422049999999999,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"Restructuring policing in ways that matter will take months, years, and many more","bbox":{"left":0.177425,"top":0.313583,"width":0.6572070000000001,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"Confederate monuments remain standing than have come down. But one change has been","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.350553,"width":0.7252040000000001,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"implemented quickly: translating this social upheaval into print has suddenly and all but","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.387826,"width":0.697941,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"unanimously restored a capital B to Black. I say “restored,” because that capital B appeared in","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.424796,"width":0.745989,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"the 1970s. I used it myself. Then copy-editors, uncomfortable with both the odd combination of","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.461765,"width":0.762455,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"upper-case Black and lower-case white and the unfamiliar, bumpy Black and White took off","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.498735,"width":0.726376,"height":0.018496000000000012}},{"text":"both capital letters. In one of many turns in the history of racial capitalization, Black returned to","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.535705,"width":0.7617130000000001,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"black.","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.572674,"width":0.04651799999999999,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"“Spell It with a Capital,” exhorted the Chicago Conservator in 1878. This pioneering Black","bbox":{"left":0.177425,"top":0.609644,"width":0.7049920000000001,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"weekly newspaper was founded by Ferdinand Lee Barnett, the husband of the crusading anti-","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.646614,"width":0.744434,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"lynching journalist Ida B. Wells. For the Conservator, as for journalists in the succeeding half","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.683583,"width":0.729906,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"century, the letter in question was N, for Negro, the then progressive name for Americans of","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.720553,"width":0.7361800000000001,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"African descent. As part of an extensive letter-writing campaign, W. E. B. Du Bois asked the New","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.757523,"width":0.7634280000000001,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"York Times in 1926 to capitalize Negro because the lower-case N inflicted “a personal insult.”","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.794492,"width":0.7391860000000001,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"The Times refused, although the New Republic had agreed years earlier. By 1930, all Black and","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.831462,"width":0.747557,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"several important white newspapers, including the New York World, New York Herald Tribune,","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.868432,"width":0.75156,"height":0.018495999999999957}},{"text":"Page 1","bbox":{"left":0.839385,"top":0.939831,"width":0.044426999999999994,"height":0.015535999999999994}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}