Evanston, Ill., Leads the Country With First Reparations Program for Black Residents

The $10 million initiative will provide housing and mortgage assistance to address discrimination.
Flag waving supporters celebrate D.C. Statehood Week
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The Battle Against D.C. Statehood is Rooted in Anti-Black Racism

Understanding this history helps make the case for D.C. as the 51st state.
A highway sign on Route 1 points the way to Soul City.

The Lost Plan for a Black Utopian Town

Soul City in North Carolina was designed to build Black wealth and address racial injustice. Then its opponents lined up.
Photographs from Tulsa shaped into a three-dimensional sculpture.

The Unrealized Promise of Oklahoma

How the push for statehood led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence.
Man walking though flood in Chicago

Redlined, Now Flooding

Maps of historic housing discrimination show how neighborhoods that suffered redlining in the 1930s face a far higher risk of flooding today.
Caribou at the Arctic Refuge.
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Indigenous Advocacy Transformed the Fight Over Oil Drilling in the Arctic Refuge

Racial justice is now as much a part of the debate as environmentalism vs. oil drilling.
tattered Texas state flag

An Honest History of Texas Begins and Ends With White Supremacy

One Texas Republican state House member wants to create a “patriotic” education project to celebrate the Lone Star State—and whitewash its ugly past.
Activist Donivan Brown on the Walnut Street Bridge.

The Lynching That Black Chattanooga Never Forgot Takes Center Stage Downtown

The city will memorialize part of its darkest history at the refurnished Walnut Street Bridge.
Cleo Davis and Kayin Talton Davis are artists and activists who have made it their mission to preserve and celebrate African American history in Portland. Here, their daughter, Ifetayo Davis, stands with her father and sisters outside their home.

Oregon Once Legally Banned Black People. Has the State Reconciled its Racist Past?

Oregon became ground zero of America’s racial reckoning protests last summer. But activists say it doesn’t know its own history.
Harriet Tubman and Elizabeth Keckley over a map of Washington DC.

How Black Women Brought Liberty to Washington in the 1800s

A new book shows us the capital region's earliest years through the eyes and the experiences of leaders like Harriet Tubman and Elizabeth Keckley.
Construction of the U.S. Air Force Academy Chapel

Up In The Air

The restoration of the Air Force Academy Chapel is the U.S.’s most complex modernist preservation project ever.
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Burden of Richmond Evictions Weighs Heaviest in Black Neighborhoods

An eviction moratorium has slowed filings in cities like Richmond, but it hasn’t stopped them, and Black tenants are at highest risk.

John Muir in Native America

Muir's romantic vision obscured Indigenous ownership of the land—but a new generation is pulling away the veil.
Elizabeth Catte and her book

'Pure America': Eugenics Past and Present

Historian Elizabeth Catte traces the history and influence of eugenics from her backyard across the country.
Roundabout at the George Floyd memorial, at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

George Floyd and a Community of Care

At E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a self-organizing network explores what it means to construct and maintain a public memorial.
A home in Paramus, New Jersey.

Slavery's Legacy Is Written All Over North Jersey, If You Know Where to Look

New Jersey was known as the slave state of the North, and our early economy was built on unpaid labor.
Illustration of the Reconstruction era, with black men waving flags and listening to a speech in front of a governmet building while a white mob comes to attack them with clubs

America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama

When I think about the 1870 riot, I remember how the country rejected the opportunity it had.
A picture of the Dudley Diggs House

At William & Mary, a School for Free and Enslaved Black Children is Rediscovered

Opened in 1760, the school may be the oldest still-standing building of its kind.

The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve

In 1963, a Black politician named Ben Lewis was shot to death in Chicago. Decades later, it remains no accident authorities never solved the crime.
A couple eating dinner by candlelight in Texas

Experiments in Self-Reliance

Thoreau’s life is a lesson not in self-reliance, but in discerning whom and what to rely on, whether you’re one person or a state of 29 million.
Collage of images related to Monopoly's history

The Prices on Your Monopoly Board Hold a Dark Secret

The property values of the popular game reflect a legacy of racism and inequality.
The entrance at Camp Livingston.

Forgotten Camps, Living History

Reckoning with the legacy of Japanese internment in the South.
Mountains in California.

The Lost Rivers of Owens Valley

Water—who owns it, who uses it—has shaped this landscape from the Paiutes’ irrigation canals to the Los Angeles aqueduct.
St. Louis arch

The Arch of Injustice

St. Louis seems to define America’s past—but does it offer insight for the future?
Illustration of Thomas Morton of Merrymount being arrested by Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony

Pranksters and Puritans

Why Thomas Morton seems to have taken particular delight in driving the Pilgrims and Puritans out of their minds.
Protest (possibly late 1980s or 1990s) for racial equality in Forsyth County. At right, a group of counter-protesters in favor of segregation stand with signs and the confederate flag.

The Sickening History of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Hometown

It was the scene of “the most successful racial cleansing in U.S. history,” and the results of that history were still on display during her years in high school there.
A walk-up customer at the door of a minister's marriage license booth in Elkton, Md. during the 1920-30s.

How Elkton Became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast

The story of one small Maryland town that became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast in the 20th century.
Protestors holding signs on a bridge

Fighting School Segregation Didn't Take Place Just in the South

In the 1950s, Harlem mother Mae Mallory fought a school system that she saw as 'just as Jim Crow' as the one she had attended in the South.
Collage of FSA and OWI photographs
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Photogrammar

A web-based visualization platform for exploring the 170,000 photos taken by U.S. government agencies during the Great Depression.
The Black Panthers

Why a Shootout Between Black Panthers and Law Enforcement 50 Years Ago Matters Today

In 1971, armed officers went to a house occupied by Black Panther activists, marking a policing trajectory toward a more militarized response to Black activism.