Heather Tirado Gilligan
HuffPost
Oakland, CA, United States
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Past articles by Heather:
I'm Dreaming Of A Less White Christmas For My Child of Color
The world is thwarting my efforts to create a space for my daughter where people of color are front and center. → Read More
You Need to Bring Your Family's Anti-Racist Learnings to Game Night, Too
Many popular children's board games rely on racist and colonialist narratives, which young kids can inadvertently absorb and learn as they play. → Read More
The black-versus-white basketball game that integrated the sport
When the Harlem Globetrotters and the Minneapolis Lakers decided to play an exhibition game in Chicago in 1948, the contest was dismissed as a publicity stunt. There was no way the Globetrotters, an… → Read More
Women took on the male leadership of the radical 1960s Puerto Rican movement and (mostly) won
Denise Oliver fled the headquarters of Amiri Baraka’s Black Nationalist organization, Committee for Unified Newark, shortly after arriving— without her male companions. A founding member of the Young… → Read More
Sylvia Rivera threw one of the first bottles in the Stonewall riots, but her activism went much…
Sylvia Rivera was a queen before her time. Born to a Puerto Rican father and Venezuelan mother in the Bronx in 1951, she was soon abandoned by her father and orphaned at age three when her mother… → Read More
A town of freed slaves — on Robert E. Lee’s old estate — was destroyed to make Arlington cemetery
Sojourner Truth was outraged, but her feelings didn’t show in a letter she wrote about her meeting with Abraham Lincoln in October 1864. She’d gone to Lincoln to call his attention to the conditions… → Read More
The invention of ‘Hispanics’ created a political force of 27 million strong
On a California morning in 1969, as dawn outlined the nearby mountain ridges in purple, a pickup truck bounced down a dirt road in the Coachella Valley, filled with activists urging farmhands still… → Read More
An entire Manhattan village owned by black people was destroyed to build Central Park
Three churches, a school, and dozens of homes were demolished → Read More
The economy is killing the lesbian bar, again
Lesbian bars have been closing across the country for the past decade or so, a devastating loss for a generation of women who counted on them as an entree into gay life and a sustaining source of… → Read More
After fleeing the Nazis, many Jewish refugee professors found homes at historically black colleges
And they were shocked by race relations in the South → Read More
This black writer penned plantation fiction while passing as white
Charles Chestnutt wrote enduring tales of the Old South → Read More
Socialized medicine was coined in the US, not Europe
We coined the term socialized medicine here in America, where we take the injunction to live free or die very literally. The phrase conjures images of endless paperwork, autonomy sacrificed for the… → Read More
The most famous textbook in American history is full of garbage science
In the ultimate fight between science and religion, science won. At least that’s the story we typically hear about the Scopes trial, which changed the way evolution is taught in schools. However, the… → Read More
There used to be 4 billion American chestnut trees, but they all disappeared
American chestnut trees once blanketed the east coast, with an estimated 4 billion trees spreading in dense canopies from Maine to Mississippi and Florida. These huge and ancient trees, up to 100… → Read More
The ‘Cheers for Chubby’ PSA scared many Americans into thinking they were too fat
Welcome to the theater, here’s a short film to shame you! → Read More
The most famous book about slavery has been rejected by black thinkers since it was published
Most of us have heard of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and have learned, as part of our high school history lessons, the critical role of the book in galvanizing public opinion against slavery in the… → Read More
What would Ayn Rand think of her admirer Donald Trump?
Why has arch-capitalist Ayn Rand been so popular with populists, those champions of the common man, for nearly two decades now? Donald Trump loves her, as does a cadre of conservatives who’ve played… → Read More
Why Racism Is Terrible for Everyone's Health
Heather Gilligan explores the impact of racism on the fight towards universal health care. → Read More