Excerpts

How historians have understood Africa and the Black diaspora in global conversations about race and identity.

The moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination.

A new work of history finds the best antidote to today’s authoritarian politics in Daniel Webster’s 19th-century civic nationalism.

‘Specimens’ were acquired from Africa, Asia, and the Americas by deceptive human traffickers.

A documentary about his life and circle is a study in complicity.

Reclaiming sweetness in an anti-Black world.

Perhaps no Native American is more admired for military acumen than the Lakota leader. But is that how he wanted to be remembered?

Meet the duo who helped achieve the most important labor and civil rights victories of their age.

Some of the stars depicted in Yesiltas’ portraits are instantly recognizable as modern-day sirens, while others are less obvious at first glance.

This digital exploration of the region's LGBTQ community from 1946 to 1992 includes an interactive map and several thematic StoryMaps.

For pioneering journalist Bessie Beatty, women’s suffrage and the plight of labor were linked inextricably.

How an Asian American literary pioneer fell into obscurity.

Nothing dates our vision of the future like how we remember the past.

Our government institutions, and especially our scientific ones, have a duty to rebuild the public trust that has eroded over the last half century.

By age 44, most people are figuring out how to live and die peacefully. That was certainly not the case with sharecropper and hero Fannie Lou Hamer.

Thanks to an 1835 treaty, they’re pushing Democrats to approve a nonvoting delegate.

The F.B.I. director promised to save American democracy from those who would subvert it—while his secret programs subverted it from within.

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.

They looked at France and said: “Make it make sense.”

Is Jefferson's Bible evidence that the Founding Fathers engaged with scripture to birth a Christian nation? Or that they sought to foster a new secular order?

Considering the lessons and history of Crockett Johnson’s classic.

A brief look into Equiano's life reveals that many Black figures were considerably more transnational in their movements and critiques than commonly assumed.

A new book uncovers the story of New York’s pursuit of water, and the homes and communities destroyed in the process.

"Female physicians" did a lot more than provide abortions, but abortion soon encompassed how others perceived their work.

Presidents used to own their personal papers — but there were real security reasons for changing that.

Some lessons for Joe Biden from the ’70s presidents who lived it.

In the US, where less than one percent of the land is owned by black people, Black landownership has historically been a means to challenge economic oppression.

The absence of robust transportation infrastructure hurts us — and not only at the gas pump.

The story of Motley's legal career prior to Brown v. Board, and her crucial participation in it.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s unique blend of traditional and progressive sensibilities.

Newspaper announcements from 1859 reveal how some Richmond slaveholders organized to protect the institution of slavery.

The elixir had antifreeze, for flavor. Nobody blinked—at first.

Assessing age — and protecting children — has always been subjective.

The author's personal history with the dolls, and an argument for American Girl to make a new doll with a disability.

The usual narrative about the "Volcker shock" leaves a lot out — and policymakers risk learning the wrong lessons.

While unionization in the service industry is increasingly in the news today, it is important to recognize that this is not a new development.

A 1968 student uprising at the Tuskegee Institute married practical demands with political vision.

A quiet movement that began in the 1920s didn’t disappear—it just went underground.

The little-told tale of the 1651 trial of Hugh and Mary Parsons.

Using the historical record to model long-term wind patterns in remote parts of the world where few instrumental data sets prior to 1957 exist.

Pseudonyms allowed Adams to audition ideas and venture out on limbs without fear of reprisal.

How the city's urban and suburban landscape shaped its alternating history of oppression and opportunity.

Before Geronimo met any white Americans or came to think of them as enemies of the Apaches, he spent years fighting Mexicans.

Robert Moses' final project, Co-op City, both reflected and defied major trends in New York City.

Why a hundred thousand Americans were ready to believe that Christ would return to earth in 1843.

Apocalyptic thinking in early Christian fundamentalism.

The senators, like the grand jurors, knew their man, and probably conceded that Temple had given him the hiding he had been asking for. 

That status has been taken as obvious, then questioned, then reasserted over the decades.

Poe’s work reminds us that the separation of “Arts” and “Sciences” into discrete discourses of knowledge is itself a quite recent invention.

The Coney Island “Congress,” supposedly captured here in audio, was a conglomeration of counterfeits.