Excerpts

What do we do when there are whole cities full of ghosts, each one with their own unique story to tell, each one with something left undone?

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.

Over a century after one of New York City’s deadliest industrial accidents, the names of its victims, most of them women, are being enshrined in steel.

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.

Some personal reflections on history, memory, and the survival of democracies.

Coming from the Congo, I knew where an essential ingredient for atomic bombs was mined, even if everyone else seemed to ignore it.

Here’s what it’s like to report on the process as an Indigenous journalist.

Penmanship was once considered a window to the soul. The digital age has closed it.

With more queer history detectives, what could our future look like?

"I thought, surely after the success of 'Sesame Street' and my contribution to it, all kinds of Latinx talent would flood the media. Not so."

A cooking assignment helps illuminate the lives of Jewish women in the past for students.

How a folklorist encourages people to experience the past and present of a place.

Why historians like to think of themselves as detectives.

A pastor's son reflects on his evangelical father's beliefs regarding politics in the pulpit.

The idea that non-white immigrants are, generally speaking, new to the Midwest could not be further from the truth.

My hunt for one man across the lonely expanse of the queer past ended in a place I never expected.

A food writer's reminiscences of local cuisine in the springtime.

On the enormous, ornate, and extremely impractical bathtub in his family’s old-fashioned brownstone home.

Remembering what the Iraq War was like, 20 years later.

The man who changed America.

In the 1960s, Annette Gordon-Reed was the first Black child to enroll in a white school in her hometown. Now she reflects on having a new school there named for her.

Christopher Rufo's polemical attacks against Critical Race Theory are not a new phenomenon. Public schools have long been a battlefield for ideological warfare.

What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed reflects on the transformation and growth of Black arts since the 1960s.

During the heyday of the Chicano Movement, school walkouts were organized to disrupt what activists called “the ongoing mis-education of Chicano students.”

The fact that most doctors like me don't know how to perform abortions is one of the greatest scandals of contemporary medicine in the US.

Her death was listed as ‘manic depressive psychosis,’ and it sent five of her six children to orphanages.

Reclaiming sweetness in an anti-Black world.

The traditional wooden barn persists even as family farms have been almost entirely replaced by multinational agribusiness.

The author confronts the daunting task of writing about her childhood memory, both as a memoirist and a historian.

A scholar wrestles with the legacy of her grandfather, onetime leader of America’s Communist Party.

A southerner discovers the inaccuracy of the the myths he grew up with, and slowly comes to terms with his connection to the Civil War.

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

Why are so many songs of the Confederacy indelibly inscribed in my Yankee memory?

I wish I’d asked my grandfather more questions.

An Iraqi soldier recalls fleeing through hell at the end of the first gulf war.

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.

In 1908, Eugene Debs eulogized John Brown as America's "greatest liberator," vowing the Socialist Party would continue Brown's work. We publish it here in full.

A personal account of how one young woman travels to South Carolina in search of her family history and freedom narrative.

Philadelphia gave America its flag, along with other enduring icons of nationhood. But for many, the red, white and blue banner embodies a legacy of injustice.

Finding struggle and resilience on a road trip through the birthplace of the blues.

It's impossible for most black Americans to construct full family trees, but genetic testing can provide some clues.

All good storytellers tell a big story within a little story, and so do all good historians.

A first-person account of Fidel Castro during a monumental moment in history.

"It didn’t make much sense for us to be talking about justice in the classroom if we weren’t willing to get in the struggle in the streets."

The city is at a crossroads. Which path will it take?

The right to abortion is an affirmation that women and girls have the right to control their own destiny.

No woman should have to go through what I went through, and no woman should have to overcome barriers to obtain a safe abortion.

Ashley D. Farmer and Tanisha C. Ford explain the importance of biographical writing of African American women and the personal connection involved.

Minnie Bruce Pratt shares her own story as a lesbian within the South, and the activism that occurred and the activism still ongoing.

Confessions of an FBI special agent.