The Death and Life of a Great American Building

Longtime tenant in the 165-year-old St. Denis building in New York City reflects on the building's history.

A New Struggle Coming

On the teachers' strike in West Virginia.
partner

Protecting Places: Historic Preservation and Public Broadcasting

An collection of audio and video recordings that document Americans' efforts to preserve historic structures.

Carter G. Woodson’s West Virginia Wasn’t ‘Trump Country,’ It Was a Land of Opportunity

In his travelogues, Woodson rhapsodized over what he saw as a love of democracy among hard-scrabble mountain settlers of both races.

How White Settlers Buried the Truth About the Midwest's Mysterious Mounds

Pioneers and early archeologists preferred to credit distant civilizations, not Native Americans, with building these cities.
Harper's Weekly illustration titled "The Negro Exodus -- the Old Style and the New," depicting a fugitive slave and exodusters traveling west.

Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

Roads to Nowhere: How Infrastructure Built on American Inequality

From highways carved through thriving ‘ghettoes’ to walls segregating areas by race, city development has a divisive history.

America's Basketball Heaven

Kinston, NC has faced immense adversity, yet it has become the NBA capital of the world.

A Terraqueous Counter-Narrative in US History

For hundreds of years, Florida has had the reputation of being a little unstable.

Reclaiming Stone Mountain From the Alt-Right

How Stone Mountain could become a battlefield where neo-Confederates from across the country make their last stand.

The Complicated History of Race and Mardi Gras

The celebration is steeped in a history of racial politics no number of floats could easily erase.
Leander Woods’s gravestone in Nashville National Cemetery.

The Man Who Fought the Klan and Won

America loves a good scoundrel. We should remember this one.

The Latin American Aesthetic of L.A. Music Culture

Understanding the immense reach and cultural implications of Latin American music.
Aerial map showing New Orleans and steamboats on the Mississippi River.

How Humans Sank New Orleans

Engineering put the Crescent City below sea level. Now, its future is at risk.

The Slave Revolution That Gave Birth to Haiti

A rebellion against French colonial rule in 1791 led to a new kind of society.

How Poverty and Racism Persist in Mississippi

Author Jesmyn Ward on the racism “built into the bones” of the state where she grew up and is choosing to raise her children.

Why Doesn't Garfield Assassination Site on the National Mall Have a Marker?

A new campaign by historians seeks to bring recognition to the site where the 20th president was shot.
Drawing of a black man holding a shovel (out of frame).

Arlington Is More Than a Cemetery

Arlington House’s transformations mirror our own.
original

Encountering the Plantation Myth Where You'd Least Expect It

Well off Savannah's tourist trail, there's a replica of an antebellum plantation home in the middle of a public housing project.

How to Build a Segregated City 

How can adjacent neighborhoods in the same city be so drastically unequal?

Even the Dead Could Not Stay

An illustrated history of urban renewal in Roanoke, Virginia.
A graphic featuring Zonia Baber and the Earth.

The Woman Who Transformed How We Teach Geography

By blending education and activism, Zonia Baber made geography a means of uniting—not conquering—the globe.

The Girls High School Experiment

In 1830, Boston had just concluded a radical experiment — a high school for girls.
High school student in Shreveport.

Taking a Knee and Taking Down a Monument

The struggle over Shreveport's Confederate monument converges with talk about a national anthem protest by high-schoolers.

Shouldn’t You Be in California?

The western frontiers of national wellness culture.
Alice Lee Hum with her mother Jean, at a laundry on 21st Ave in Astoria, Queens, c. 1951.

How Childhoods Spent in Chinese Laundries Tell the Story of America

The laundry: a place to play, grow up, and live out memories both bitter and sweet.

The Strike That Brought MLK to Memphis

In his final days, King stood by striking sanitation workers. We returned to the city to see what has changed—and what hasn’t.

Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal

A digital exhibit on the history and legacy of the canal.
The river between modern-day El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez, CH from the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey

The River That Became a Warzone

The US-Mexico border wall is disrupting and destroying the lives of a united binational community.
partner

Renewing Inequality

An interactive set of maps documenting the more than 300,000 families displaced by urban renewal projects between 1955 and 1966.