"Canadian Judge Frees North Carolina Negro." This is the title of a New York Times article published on March 3, 1922. The "North Carolina Negro" being referred to is Matthew Bullock. This is his story.

In Django Unchained, the protagonist makes the fictional journey from slavery to freedom in the Antebellum Southern U.S. circa 1858. As President Obama reminded us, Tuesday marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation which announced the end of slavery in the USA in 1863. Toussaint L'Ouverture played the leading role in the real-life drama alongside and his revolutionary army of self-emancipated barefoot slaves, defeating the three great empires of the eighteenth century -- Spain, England, and France -- and finally winning independence after a decade of toil.

The Queen has not been particularly successful at keeping her realms and territories together -- inheriting 32, but now reigning over only half that many. It's entirely possible that the Commonwealth is no longer particularly relevant to the modern world and will slowly fade away into history.

CBC -- A Dutch group is threatening to burn Lawrence Hill's award-winning novel The Book of Negroes, because they oppose the use of the word "negro" i...