Slavery

Did a man named "Arnold Bushman" light himself on fire to protest "Disney making the little mermaid black"? No, that's not true: A tweet from October 2024 with that claim was screenshotted and went viral again in early 2025. However the image in the post showed a man named Aaron Bushnell who immolated himself in February 2024 to protest the…

Is former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell accurately credited with a "lazy immigrants" quote often shared on social media? No, that's not true: The quote was first published on social media in 2019 by a user on X who acknowledged having written it. There is no record of the former general publicly sharing this sentiment. The Foreign Service Institute…

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy officially declare war on Russia's allies, Iran and North Korea? No, that's not true: Despite what some social media posts are saying, as of this writing neither Ukrainian government sites, the Iranian Embassy in Ukraine nor news media have mentioned any such declaration of war. In public speeches Zelenskyy has described Iran and North Korea's…

Did Donald Trump announce in a Time magazine interview that "he'd force every pregnant woman to submit to constant government monitoring" to ensure they don't have an abortion? No, that's not true: The former president outlined many other plans for the next term if he is re-elected, but this specific proposition was not one he explicitly argued for in the…

Does a video show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talking about his plan to "liberate" or "recolonize" Black people of Africa? No, that's not true: The clip cut off a sentence from his 2016 African Summit speech where he made it clear he was quoting a statement by a historical figure. On that occasion, Netanyahu said nothing about "recolonization." The…

Was a Black Friday video of a lone man entering a store empty of shoppers taken in the U.S. in 2023, reflecting the U.S. economy under President Joe Biden? No, that's not true: This video was shot in the United Kingdom in November 2017. A BBC News correspondent posted this video on what was then Twitter, now X, in 2017,…

Did today's Black Americans descend from Africans who inhabited North America before European colonizers arrived in the 15th century? No, that's not true: Paleontological, archaeological and genetic evidence all suggest that the original inhabitants of North America who were present on the continent when European explorers arrived were the ancestors of modern Indigenous people, an anthropologist told Lead Stories. Historical…

Does the idea that 1.4 percent of Americans owned slaves in 1860 represent the true extent of slavery at that time? No, that's not true: That statistic isn't meaningful. By 1860, slave ownership was concentrated in the southern U.S., making only the population in those states relevant to the issue of slave ownership. The population of the southern U.S. also…

Did a robot that experienced "wage slavery" for 15 minutes commit suicide after determining that was the logical choice rather than to continue working? No, that's not true: The video was posted by Agility Robotics, celebrating the 99-percent success rate of its live demos, while acknowledging that its Digit robot did have a couple of falls. This robot's accident happened…

Did KFC tweet for Black History Month a photo of a chicken drumstick in front of a drumstick shadow that looks like a raised fist? No, that's not true: KFC's U.S. corporate account never posted this image, which has been altered. The Instagram account for KFC Trinidad and Tobago, part of the restaurant's international franchise network, tweeted the image in…