Excerpts

Contrary to contemporary claims, Susan B. Anthony and her peers rarely discussed abortion, which only emerged as a key political issue in the 1960s.

Their main objective was to draw attention to racist state policies and demand their repeal.

How “undue burden”—a concept nurtured by anti-abortion groups and championed by the first woman on the Supreme Court—has eroded the right to choose.

In the 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project interviewed 300 formerly enslaved Virginians to share their oral histories.

The lack of investment in neighborhoods has resulted in communities of color living in areas far hotter than those of their white neighbors.

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

How nonprofits went from essential service providers to vehicles for programs shaped and approved by capital.

Now is a critical time to acquire a better understanding of this misunderstood and oversimplified philosophy known as Neomercantilism.

A new digital archive from UVA Carter G. Woodson Institute and Center for Digital Editing explores the late Civil Rights leader’s life, legacy, and writings.

Texas education officials have preliminarily voted to reject a Mexican-American history textbook that scholars have said was riddled with inaccuracies.

Even the most mundane of objects associated with the Founding Father have a story.

Russian serfdom and American slavery ended within two years of each other; the defenders of these systems of bondage surprisingly shared many of the same arguments.

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

The industry's price-gouging economic model was engineered by Wall Street and its political enablers—and only Washington can fix it.

The South must reform its attitude toward the Negro. The North must reform its attitude toward common labor. 

It will help black Americans to recall that they have a history that transcends victimization and exclusion.

The euphonia, the phonograph, and the gendering of nineteenth century mechanical speech.

The disturbing conclusion might just be that evangelicalism does not exist.

Human relationships to this global crop have been shaped by both violence and resilience.

In an era of laissez-faire governance, a growing number of federal and state regulations were justified as necessary to protect public health and morality.

The humble origins and complex future of cowboy competition.

Read the original article that unearthed the Tuskegee experiment.

The gambit was cynical and disruptive, but in the end it didn’t work.

The piece of paper went missing for nearly 200 years, leaving some scholars to question whether it even existed

Two new studies ask readers to think expansively about art’s involvement in a broader system of racial capitalism.

At the heart of recent US Supreme Court decisions, the Fourteenth Amendment was framed to require free speech and free elections in the South.

In recent years, Seguin has honored the Texas Rangers with memorials. My father agreed to build one—but then started having second thoughts.

In the 1990s, the New Democrats trusted corporations to do the right thing. The results were disastrous.

A great-great-grandson of Joseph Smith Jr. found the Mormon prophet’s photo tucked inside a locket passed down for generations.

For two centuries, America had kept questions of church and state at bay. The country is not ready for the ones to come.

How Christian conservatives' version of American history shaped the Supreme Court’s abortion and gun decisions.

A letter from the creators of Freedom's Journal to their initial patrons.

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.

Passage of the ERA seemed like a sure thing. So why did it fail to become law?

By reengineering the economy and society to their own benefit, Google and Facebook are undermining personal freedom and corroding democracy.

King could not accomplish what philosophers and theologians also failed to—distinguishing moral from immoral law in a polarized society.

Andrew Liptak on the origins of cosplay.

The beginning of the fight for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

While cemeteries are tributes to the dead, they are really about the living. They are about those who want to commemorate something.

Víctor Jara was a legendary Chilean folk singer and political activist whose murder during a U.S.-backed military coup in 1973 went unsolved for decades.

George Kennan's diaries reveal just how much he hated America.

When Ruggles Mine went up for auction, mineral collectors feared it would never reopen to the public. After a last-minute reprieve, its future is still uncertain.

A feminist rant for the ages.

America is best understood not as the first post-colonial republic, but as an expansionist nation built on slavery and native expropriation.

On this episode of BackStory, Brian sits down with Ed to talk about a project of his that’s been twenty-five years in the making.

The centrist, compromising view of reproductive rights in Planned Parenthood v. Casey helped clear the path to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court has found protections for people’s privacy in several constitutional amendments – and used it as a basis for some fundamental protections.

How shall a generation know its story, if it will know no other?

After the 2020 removal of Confederate memorials, museums provide a place to confront the ugly past and find a way forward.