Excerpts

C.R. Patterson & Sons of Greenfield became the first Black-owned automobile manufacturer in 1915. More than a century later, it remains the only known one.

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.

When it comes to protecting our personal privacy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Reparations must be rooted in a political context that will safeguard rather than erode the gains they make towards justice.

Recent years have witnessed a record number of challenges against books, especially in school libraries. But attempts to ban certain books isn't new in the U.S.

Written during World War II, Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos imagined a future liberated from racism and inequality.

We see our history of racism against Black Americans as distinct from our immigration policy, but the two are actually deeply intertwined.

Today, the military is perhaps the largest integrated institution in the US. But how it came to be this way reveals a history of racism and resistance.

Many groups who identify as Indigenous don’t claim to be first peoples; many who came first don’t claim to be Indigenous. Can the idea escape its colonial past?

Georgia’s Richard Russell was an unrepentant racist. You’d think a name change would be a no-brainer. And yet...

The Florida governor’s long-ignored 2011 work, "Dreams From Our Founding Fathers," reveals a distinct vision of American history.

Some see the reaction to Sen. Fetterman’s announcement as a sign of progress, but that’s less true than you might think.

The California Historical Society contrasts how Chinese people were portrayed in the press with the dignified studio portraits taken in Chinatown.

On "Sesame Street," Delgado was able to build a character who challenged stereotypes. Luis was a business owner, a neighbor, and later a husband and father.

How an old textbook lodged itself in the heart of New Orleans’ self-mythology.

“Paper City” explores the forgotten firebombing of Japan’s capital.

A century ago, physical fitness was part of a strange subculture, where strong bodies were extraordinary and meant to placed on pedestals for people to observe.

Did you know that there was a hidden utopia of formerly enslaved people located in the mountains of Appalachia?

Sing Sing's football team, The Black Sheep, ascended to fame even though its players were incarcerated. One player was so good, he signed with the Eagles.

How Emily Dickinson, scientists, and other writers theorized plant intelligence in the nineteenth century.

An interview with the author of "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism."

How market fundamentalists convinced Americans to loathe government.

Police K-9 units in the United States emerged during the Civil Rights era. This was not a coincidence.

The paper’s anti-trans coverage parallels its failings over gay rights and AIDS. But the Times appears determined not to learn from its own history.

Leftists have regarded Lincoln as a pro-labor hero who helped vanquish chattel slavery. We should celebrate him today within the radical democratic tradition.

How should a republic honor its leaders?

One-hundred years ago, the U.S. government waged a deliberate and organized campaign against South-Asian Americans.

Emma Goldman’s opposition to the American government poses an interesting question for our modern democracy: is there room for radical dissent?

A century of battles over a neighborhood pool reveal a complicated picture, about who matters, and who gets the chance to live well in a segregated city.

Ash derided women’s liberation as “that foolishness” – but her success story is very feminist.

The genre is the product of migration, rebirth, and the struggle to be heard.

Hip-hop DJ culture provides a rich site for exploring how culture and industry can converge and collaborate, as well as how they need each other to move forward.

Ken Burns’s "The U.S. and the Holocaust" distorts the historical record in service of a political message.

Lost wars, especially when defeat comes as a rude surprise, inevitably spark painful self-examination.

In 1947, the United States sacrificed for the sake of a starving Europe.

Thoreau-themed goods, designed for mindfulness, are the marketplace’s remedies for a problem which, according to Thoreau, was created by the marketplace itself.

A new book calls white evangelicals to reckon with the fact that the groundwork for their movement was laid, in part, by J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.

Decades before the recent police violence in Memphis, a brutally beaten Latino man was tossed by officers into a Houston bayou and drowned.

The year 2023 marks the centennial of many iconic L.A. landmarks, including the Hollywood sign, Memorial Coliseum, Biltmore Hotel and the Angelus Temple.

Medical schools in the antebellum U.S. were critical in the formation of a medical community that shared ideas about racial science.

Much of what's happening in American race relations traces back to 1966, the year the Black Panthers were formed.

Enslaved conspirators in far-flung Accomack County forced some whites to rethink any legislative efforts aiding Black Virginians.

How the Senate has become a bastion of Republican minority rule.

Palm oil is in everything, but it is also enmeshed in global supply chains that rely on brutal working conditions and the destruction of the planet.

Conservatives have long refused to accept that America’s past is complicated.

Benjamin Prine's descendants didn’t know about their family ties – or their connection to his enslaver.

We may never know with absolute certainty that the Great Fire was an accident, but Grim certainly made it harder for anyone to argue otherwise.

The role of family in Huey P. Newton's educational journey.

The confluence of Black modernity, self-determinism, and belongingness of Harlem's housing.

Sesame Street's most famous origin story centers on a 1966 dinner party. But the program was actually the culmination of a career that began much earlier.