Illustration of Mina Miller Edison in front of news clippings about her.

Mina Miller Edison Was Much More Than the Wife of the 'Wizard of Menlo Park'

The second wife of Thomas Edison, she viewed domestic labor as a science, calling herself a "home executive."
Bobby Seal and Huey Newton standig in front of a Black Panther Party sign

How Huey P. Newton’s Early Intellectual Life Led Him To Activism

The role of family in Huey P. Newton's educational journey.
Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe Had a Promising Military Career. Then He Blew it Up.

Netflix’s “The Pale Blue Eye” portrays Edgar Allan Poe as a young West Point cadet. Here’s the true story of his brief, failed military career.
A Union soldier stands with African Americans on a plantation, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, 1862.

Military Service and Black Families During the Civil War

One war, in one city, Philadelphia, and the fate of the men, women, and children left behind as collateral damage in the wake of conflict.
Artwork of trees with multicolored roots.

Yearning for Roots

We're born with a hunger for connection with our ancestors – both biological and spiritual.
Collage of members of Coles family through history.

Their Wealth Was Built On Slavery. Now a New Fortune Lies Underground.

In Virginia, the land still owned by the Coles family could yield billions in uranium. Does any of that wealth belong to the descendants of the enslaved?
Leland and Jane Stanford

Stop All the Cocks! Who Killed Jane Stanford?

Many of the ­private colleges and universities in the US arose as much out of vanity as necessity. But for morbid narcissism, nothing comes close to Stanford.
Various members of the Grimke family.

Bleeding Hearts and Blind Spots

What the story of the Grimke family tells us about race in the United States.
Black and white photograph of William Still, sitting, pasted against a blue tinted backdrop of a U.S. state map

The Forgotten Father of the Underground Railroad

The author of a book about William Still unearths new details about the leading Black abolitionist—and reflects on his lost legacy.
Illustration of William and Florence Kelley

The Father-Daughter Team Who Reformed America

Meet the duo who helped achieve the most important labor and civil rights victories of their age.
William Barber III standing in front of Vera Brown Farm.

Rebuilding the Homestead

How Black landowners in eastern North Carolina are recovering generational wealth lost to industry encroachment.

A Brief History of One of the Most Powerful Families in New York City: The Morgenthaus

An excerpt from a new book on the so-called "Jewish Kennedys."
A toddler at a small table eat a plate of food with a large glass of milk.

Empathy in the Archive: Care and Disdain for Wet Nursing Mothers

The complex story of wet nurses and their children in the time before the advent of baby formula.
Illustration of a 1950s woman surrounded by orange flames, pink background

Reading Betty Friedan After the Fall of Roe

The problem no longer has no name, and yet we refuse to solve it.
Birds-eye view map of Johnstown, New York.

The Stories We Give Ourselves

I wish I’d asked my grandfather more questions.
A picture of the author as a teenager with his parents, in his bedroom decorated with rock music posters.

My Dad and Kurt Cobain

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.
“Raise Up,” a statue by artist Hank Willis Thomas of African Americans with their hands raised above their heads, is featured in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History

A researcher delves into the past to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era South Carolina.
Enslaved African Americans hoe and plow the earth and cut piles of sweet potatoes on a South Carolina plantation, circa 1862-3.

"She Had Smothered Her Baby On Purpose"

Enslaved women's use of birth control, abortifacients, and even infanticide showed that they resisted by exerting control over their reproductive lives.
Actor John Turturro and his grandmother.

My Grandmother’s Botched Abortion Transformed Three Generations

Her death was listed as ‘manic depressive psychosis,’ and it sent five of her six children to orphanages.
Robert S. McNamara at a news conference in April 1966

Robert McNamara’s Son Reckons With a Legacy of Destruction

Craig McNamara’s family did not talk about the Vietnam War. He spent his life asking questions about it.
Troops from the 92nd Infantry Division move past a destroyed Mark VI tank on the outskirts of Ponsacco, Italy, on Sept. 1, 1944.

A Young WWII Soldier’s Remains Could Be Those of Spike Lee’s Lost Cousin

Military experts seeking to identify partial skeleton in an anonymous grave.
Black and white photo of Sitting Bull

The Early Life of the Renowned Leader of the Lakotas, Sitting Bull

The baby boy who would one day become the renowned and feared leader of the Lakotas was the second child of Returns Again and Her Holy Door.
A demonstrator outside the Supreme Court as the court rules in the Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization abortion case on June 24, 2022.
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Overturning Roe Could Threaten Rights Conservatives Hold Dear

Parental rights stem from the same liberty that the Supreme Court just began rolling back.
Silhouettes of a father and son looking at a sunset.
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Father’s Day Once Was Highly Political — and Could Become So Again

The holiday’s lack of history allowed activists to give it meaning after America’s divorce laws changed.
Drawing of showing woman and man embracing.

The 19th Century Divorce That Seized the Nation and Sank a Presidential Candidate

When James G. Blaine went to war with his son's ex-wife in the national press, he had no idea that two could play that game.
Statue of a man reading to children: the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial, Annapolis, Maryland.

Black Genealogy After Alex Haley’s Roots

"A lot has been hidden from Black Americans. And so there is always a longing to know who you are and where you come from.”
Photo Portrait of the King Family, 1966.

Reflections on Juneteenth: Black Civil Rights and the Influence of Fatherhood

From MLK to Obama, advancers for civil rights were driven by their fatherhood and dreams of better life for their own children.
A drawing of Blanche Chesebrough with her husband standing out of frame, his hand on her shoulder.

Escape From the Gilded Cage

Even if her husband was a murderer, a woman in a bad marriage once had few options. Unless she fled to South Dakota.
Up close picture of a baby bottle.

What Parents Did Before Baby Formula

The shortage is a calamity—not a victory for breastfeeding.
Picture of a worried young mother holding a sleeping newborn baby.
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Whose Breast is Best?: "Mom-shaming" in the British Atlantic World

Claims that mothers lacking formula should just breastfeed repeats a centuries-old mistake.