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Two boys looking at the “General George Washington Resigning His Commission" painting in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

Art at Capitol Honors 141 Enslavers and 13 Confederates. Who Are They?

A Washington Post investigation of more than 400 artworks in the U.S. Capitol building found that one-third honor enslavers or Confederates.
1859 painting "Negro Life in the South," with enslaved people in a courtyard.

How An Abolitionist Painting Set In D.C. Became Proslavery Propaganda

An 1859 painting by Eastman Johnson depicted enslaved people in a D.C. courtyard. Intended to humanize them, it was coopted by slavery defenders.
Engraving of freed slaves arriving at Union lines, New Bern, North Carolina, 1863.

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?
Photo of the Supreme Court Building

The Supreme Court Gets a Chance to Revisit America’s Imperialist Past

A trio of American Samoan plaintiffs are asking the high court to end their status as second-class citizens.
Black and white photo of the “Star-Spangled Banner” flown during the War of 1812, 1914.

A Fiery Gospel

A conversation about changing the American story.
Painting of Liberian leaders and Americans deliberating

How One Historian Located Liberia’s Elusive Founding Document

The piece of paper went missing for nearly 200 years, leaving some scholars to question whether it even existed
Artwork of the Supreme Court but with chess pieces used as columns..

The Supreme Court Is Not Supposed to Have This Much Power

And Congress should claw it back.
Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn, labeled "colored," in black and white.

Racism as Theory: A Historiography of White Supremacy Ideology

An overview of historical scholarship and socio-cultural developments in America to explain how racism became institutionalized against Black Americans.
Drawing of a spiral bound notebook with pen markings.

Fighting Racial Bias With an Unlikely Weapon: Footnotes

A collaborative project by legal scholars sets out to make visible the vast array of legal precedents based on cases involving enslaved people.

More Than 1,700 Congressmen Once Enslaved Black People. This is Who They Were.

The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of census records and historical documents.
‘The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site’; cartoon by Victor Gillam from Judge magazine, March 22, 1890

Whose Freedom?

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.
Image interference of Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

3 Tropes of White Victimhood

Leading conservative pundits today are pounding themes that were popular among opponents of Reconstruction.
St. Louis arch

The Arch of Injustice

St. Louis seems to define America’s past—but does it offer insight for the future?
Raphael Warnock
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Warnock’s Win Was 150 Years In the Making — But History Tells Us It Is Fragile

The selection of African American Sen. Hiram Revels in 1870 offered great hope — but it was soon dashed.
Portrait of Martin Delany in uniform

The Organizer’s Mind of Martin Delany

Delany's insistence on interest-based coalitions, evident in his fiction and political prose, explains his late-Reconstruction defection to the Democrats and his strategies for revolution.
Drawing of Lincoln with his hand on a Bible during a swearing-in with two other people

The Presidential Transition That Shattered America

A Trump-Biden transition is sure to be scary. But it’d be hard to beat Buchanan-Lincoln.
A row of Supreme Court justices.

Amid National Crises, Lincoln and His Republicans Remade the Supreme Court to Fit Their Agenda

Political contests over the ideological slant of the Court are nothing new.
Photograph of people lining up to hear arguments in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Case for Ending the Supreme Court as We Know It

The Supreme Court, the federal branch with the least public accountability, has historically sided with tradition over more expansive human rights visions.

The Great Liberal Reckoning Has Begun

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concludes an era of faith in courts as partners in the fight for progress and equality.
Drawing of headshots of Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson

"Where Two Waters Come Together"

The confluence of Black and Indigenous history at Bdote.

The Death of Hannah Fizer

Black people suffer disproportionately from police violence. But white skin does not provide immunity.

One Week to Save Democracy

Lessons from Frederick Douglass on the tortured relationship between protest and change.
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We’ve Forgotten the Worst President in American History

Could Donald Trump really rival James Buchanan?

Trump and Lincoln Are Opposite Kinds of Presidents

History is not kind to those who divide and dither.

COVID-19 and the Color Line

Due to racist policies, Black Americans are dying of COVID-19 at much higher rates than whites, and nowhere more so than in St. Louis.

How the Republican Party Took Over the Supreme Court

The 50-year effort to advance a conservative legal agenda.

An Early Case For Reparations

Two new books tell the stories of people kidnapped and sold into slavery. One of them sued successfully.

The Anti-Slavery Constitution

From the Framers on, Americans have understood our fundamental law to oppose ownership of persons.

The ‘Death Penalty’s Dred Scott’ Lives On

In 1987, the Supreme Court came within one vote of eliminating capital punishment in Georgia because of of racial disparities.

The Prophet Is Human

A towering new biography of the great American orator and public intellectual Frederick Douglass.

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