Photograph of building at Virginia Union University
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A Formerly Enslaved Woman Helped Found a Key American University

Mary Lumpkin’s life helps us to better understand the post-Civil War push for education.
Overhead view of Jamestown

Colonial Jamestown, Assailed By Climate Change, Is Facing Disaster

The 400-year-old site of Jamestown, Va., battered by flooding and climate change, is listed as endangered.
Tilted, weathered headstone near a fallen tree in Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

The Forgotten Legacy of Boston’s Historic Black Graveyard

At one of Boston’s historical burial grounds, more than 1,000 Black Bostonians were laid to rest in unmarked graves. Their legacy continues to haunt us today.
Picture of an ornate door knocker.

What Historic Preservation Is Doing to American Cities

Laws meant to safeguard great buildings and neighborhoods can also present an obstacle to social progress.
A Vietnam veteran greets supporters and press outside District Court in Concord

The Second (and Third) Battle of Lexington

What kind of place was the town I grew up in?
Painting of Yosemite Valley

How Place Names Impact The Way We See Landscape

Western landscapes and their names are stratified with personal memories, ancestral teachings, mythic events and colonial disturbances.
2022 oil painting of Jo Collier

They Called Her ‘Black Jet’

Joetha Collier, a young Black woman, was killed by a white man in 1971, near the Mississippi town where Emmett Till was murdered. Why isn’t her case well-known today?
Illustration of yellow fever victims in pain on park bench while another man flees

How Yellow Fever Intensified Racial Inequality in 19th-Century New Orleans

A new book explores how immunity to the disease created opportunities for white, but not Black, people.
Collage of four images related to urban development. Clockwise from left: photo of Ralph Nader, 1975. [Library of Congress] Aerial view of the Appalachia Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority [Tennessee Valley Authority, public domain] Edward Logue, at a hearing of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1965. [Digital Commonwealth, License CC 4.0] Hunters Point, San Francisco, ca. 1969. [San Francisco Public Library, public domain]

Public Interests

Three books offer views of the shift from public planning to neoliberal privatization, and emphasize the need to reclaim planning in the public interest.
Paul Thompson photograph of Staten Island Shipbuilding Company interior view, early 1900s, PK 4119, Staten Island Museum Photo Collection, Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, New York.

Crisis, Disease, Shortage, And Strike: Shipbuilding On Staten Island In World War I

How an industry responded to the needs of workers and of the federal government during a time of rapid mobilization for wartime production.
Replica of small town

Exploring the Midwest’s Forgotten Utopian Communes

The American Midwest was once a site of radical experimentation for various communitarian groups. What has become of their legacy?
Postcard of The Rex Float at Mardi Gras Carnival, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Strange Career of Beautiful Crescent

How an old textbook lodged itself in the heart of New Orleans’ self-mythology.
Women at Ellis Island in the traditional dress of their country of origin.

Immigrants Arriving at Ellis Island

Photographs of Ellis Island and the people who arrived there seeking a better life.
The U.S. Capitol building at night.

A Capital History

Washington has long been a disproportionately gay city—a mecca for clever, ambitious young men who want to escape their hometowns’ prying eyes.
Dancing at the spring festival at St. George in 1984.

'The World Was Ukrainian'

A stubborn and surprising immigrant enclave, hiding in plain sight on the Lower East Side.
The site in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered in 1964.

Burying a Burning

The killing of three civil-rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964 changed America.
Illustration of the shadow of Mary Lumpkin over the blueprint of Virginia Union University

The Enslaved Woman Who Liberated a Slave Jail and Transformed It Into an HBCU

Forced to bear her enslaver's children, Mary Lumpkin later forged her own path to freedom.
Grid of black and white photos of various homes with different architectural styles.

Explore Milwaukee's History Through Its Many Home Styles

Interactive map shows Milwaukee’s housing patterns reflect not only aesthetic trends but also how historical events like immigration, war and civil rights shaped the city.

Reston's Roots: Black Activism in Virginia's New Town

In the 1960s, a man named Robert E. Simon Jr. dreamed of a city that would be open to all, regardless of race or income-Reston, VA.
Illustration of a giant tree in a swamp

The Hidden and Eternal Spirit of the Great Dismal Swamp

For nearly all of its modern existence, the Great Dismal Swamp has been excluded from U.S. history. Now there’s a push to bring its significance to light.
Bernard Lynch's slave pen in St. Louis, with many potential buyers standing outside.

The Remarkable Story of Mattie J. Jackson

Her narrative documents the very real dangers enslaved runaways experienced while traveling through so-called "free states" of the North.
American Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson (center) participating in a rally, January 15, 1975 (Wikipedia Commons)

Black Mayors, Black Politics, and the Gary Convention

The National Black Political Convention of 1972 saw many national giants on the Black political scene.
A crowd watches a roller skater dance at block party in the Bronx.

The Stories of the Bronx

"Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin" is a vibrant cultural history that looks beyond pervasive narratives of cultural renaissance and urban neglect.
Photograph of a Fish Weir

A River Interrupted

Why dam removal is critical for restoring the Charles River.
Picture of the statue of Black Hawk.

Remembering Black Hawk

A history of imperial forgetting.
Photo of Sitting Bull with an aerial view of the Yellowstone Basin in the background.

How Sitting Bull's Fight for Indigenous Land Rights Shaped the Creation of Yellowstone National Park

The 1872 act that established the nature preserve provoked Lakota assertions of sovereignty.
Herd of bison

Reopen the American Frontier

Let us let the ghosts of the megafauna rise, but let us leave the old imperialists to lie in their graves undisturbed.
CORE members march down Fort Hamilton Parkway.

CORE’s Struggle for Fair Housing Rights in LA

A brief history of how the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) led organized protests against racially-discriminatory housing in Los Angeles.
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (detail), 1895, by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925); The Artchives/Alamy Stock Photo.

The Man Who Built Forward Better

Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, remain a vital part of our present.
Anita Villarreal with a campaigning Richard J. Daley

The US Arrested Her—Then She Changed Chicago

In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.