Jazz album covers.

How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
A man lifts a woman out of a boat and onto the pier. Photo from London, 1925.

The Complex History of American Dating

While going out on a date may seem like a natural thing to do these days, it wasn't always the case.
Stylized illustration of a jazz trio.

The Barrier-Breaking Ozark Club of Great Falls, Montana

The Black-owned club became a Great Falls hotspot, welcoming all to a music-filled social venue for almost thirty years.
Lucretia Howe Newman Coleman

Finding Lucretia Howe Newman Coleman

Once a powerful voice in the Black press, Coleman all but disappeared from the literary landscape of the American Midwest after her death in 1948.
A kickline of five Asian American dancers at the Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco.

Americanism, Exoticism, and the “Chop Suey” Circuit

Asian American artists who performed for primarily white audiences in the 1930s and ’40s both challenged and solidified racial boundaries in the United States.
Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway standing on stage singing to each other.

Radical Light

The cosmic collision of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.
Man spinning record player with woman in the background

Making Music Male

How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?
Drawing of a Black man in court pleading with a judge in 1741.

Was the Conspiracy That Gripped New York in 1741 Real?

Rumors that enslaved Black New Yorkers were planning a revolt spread across Manhattan even more quickly than the fires for which they were being blamed.
Woman smiling mischeviously and holding bottles of liquor

Whiskey, Women, and Work

Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.
Two women fighting

How to Fight Like a Girl

Women have been punching each other in the face (during boxing matches) since the early 1700s.
A train yard in Montgomery, Alabama, 1897

The Ballad of Railroad Bill

The story of Morris Slater, aka Railroad Bill, prompts us to ask how the legend of the "American outlaw" changes when race is involved.
Photo from the 1940s depicting a golfer lining up a shot while three others look on.

Fairness on the Fairway: Public Golf Courses and Civil Rights

Organized movements to bring racial equality to the golf course have been part of the sport since the early 1900s.
Museum diorama replica of miners eating.

How to Eat Like a 19th Century Colorado Gold-Miner

A confluence of cross-cultural foodways fed a series of Colorado’s mining booms, and can still be tasted across the state today.
Speakers address a crowd from a truck with a "WDIA March of Dimes" sign.

How Black Radio Changed the Dial

Black-appeal stations were instrumental in propelling R&B into the mainstream while broadcasting news of the ever-growing civil rights movement.
Close up of Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night

The Slap That Changed American Film-Making

When Sidney Poitier slapped a white murder suspect on screen, it changed how the stories of Black Americans were portrayed on film.
Print announcement for Florida CB personality "Bow Weevil," featuring a photo of a Black man's face on a drawing of a bowl weevil holding a microphone.

How Black CB Radio Users Created an Audible Community

CB radio was portrayed as a mostly white enthusiasm in its heyday, but Black CB users were active as early as 1959.
Women holding protest signs, demonstrating against school materials, 1975

When a Battle to Ban Textbooks Became Violent

In 1974, the culture wars came to Kanawha County, West Virginia, inciting protests over school curriculum.

What Happened to Peanut Butter and Jelly?

The rise and fall of the iconic sandwich has paralleled changes in Americans' economic conditions.
A woman setting up a picnic outside a pink car

The Sorry History of Car Design for Women

A landscape architect of the 1950s predicted that lady drivers would want pastel-colored pavement on the interstate.
James Baldwin, sitting.

James Baldwin and the FBI

The author was monitored for his political activities, but also for being gay. The surveillance took a toll on him.
Photographs and a cover of Spectra, a literary magazine.

Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
A portrait of David Ruggles, who opened the first black-owned bookstore in America, between two white men.

The First Black-Owned Bookstore and the Fight for Freedom

Black abolitionist David Ruggles opened the first Black-owned bookstore in 1834, pointing the way to freedom—in more ways than one.

Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights

Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”