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The True Story of the Freed Slave Kneeling at Lincoln’s Feet

The Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., has become a flashpoint in today’s reckoning with racist statues.
Emancipation Memorial seen through fence grating

What Frederick Douglass Had to Say About Monuments

In a newly discovered letter, the famed abolitionist wrote that ‘no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth'
Portrait of George Washington bathed in light while his enslaved personal servant, William Lee, is behind him in the shadows.

George and Martha Washington Enslaved 300 People. Let’s Start With Their Names

The man who supposedly never told a lie figured out how to stretch the truth when it came to human bondage.
Freedmen's Memorial

Yes, the Freedmen’s Memorial Uses Racist Imagery. But Don’t Tear It Down.

Keep in mind what it meant to the people who created it.
Galveston Central Wharf in 1861

Granger’s Juneteenth Orders and the Limiting of Freedom

To what extent did the Union general's famous orders actually liberate the enslaved in Texas?

Growing Up with Juneteenth

How a Texan holiday became a national tradition.

The Living History of Juneteenth, Our Next National Holiday

A celebration of emancipation in Texas is taking hold in the minds of Americans everywhere.

Juneteenth And National New Beginnings

The holiday is a reminder of the Civil War's larger meaning, the unfulfilled promise of Reconstruction, and the reinforcement of democratic values.
Two people in a horse-drawn carriage

Early Photographs of Juneteenth Celebrations

Historical photographs of early Juneteenth celebrations throughout its home state of Texas and across the country.
Five attendees singing at the 48th Annual Juneteenth Day Festival. The person in the middle has their fist raised.

Juneteenth in the Alternative Press

Reports in the underground press demonstrate how Juneteenth has been celebrated as both a social and political gathering in the twentieth century.
6 Black Americans celebrating Juneteenth in 1900.

Reunion, Juneteenth and the Meaning of the Civil War

What would it mean to define the Civil War as a necessary and crucial final step in the long, even more tragic history of slavery in America?
Boston's Emancipation Memorial depicting a black man kneeling in front of Abraham Lincoln.

Black Bostonians Fought For Freedom From Slavery. Where Are The Statues That Tell Their Stories?

Contrary to the image of the kneeling slave, Black abolitionists did not wait passively for the "Day of Jubilee." They led the charge.
A man plowing with a mule

Revisiting “Forty Acres and a Mule”

The backstory to the backstory of America’s mythic promise.
Film portrayal of James Hemmings

America’s First Connoisseur

Edward White’s new monthly column, “Off Menu,” serves up lesser-told stories of chefs cooking in interesting times.
Graphic of Sojourner Truth testifying in court.

The Electrifying Speeches of Sojourner Truth

Daina Ramey Berry details the life of the outspoken activist Sojourner Truth and her legendary speaking tour.
Photo of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: The Most Photographed American of the 19th Century

Be Woke presents Black History in two minutes (or so).

Since Emancipation, the United States Has Refused to Make Reparations for Slavery

But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million—not to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers.

I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me.

The paper’s series on slavery made avoidable mistakes. But the attacks from its critics are much more dangerous.
Illustration of Lincoln consulting with military figures in a tent.

Did Lincoln Really Matter?

What the Civil War tells us about who has the power to shape history.

The First Drag Queen Was a Former Slave

William Dorsey Swann fought for queer freedom a century before Stonewall.

The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy

Critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project obscure a longstanding debate among historians over whether the American Revolution was a proslavery revolt.

A Personal Act of Reparation

The long aftermath of a North Carolina man’s decision to deed a plot of land to his former slaves.

How Christians of Color in Colonial Virginia Became 'Black'

Although the British settlers imported Africans from the first as slaves, the earliest Virginians had yet to establish many basic rules regarding slavery.

American Slavery and ‘the Relentless Unforeseen’

What 1619 has become to the history of American slavery, 1688 is to the history of American antislavery.

Frederick Douglass’s Vision for a Reborn America

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, he dreamed of a pluralist utopia.

The Achievements, and Compromises, of Two Reconstruction-era Amendments

While they advanced African American rights, they had serious flaws, Eric Foner writes.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Narratives of Freedom

In Coates's debut novel, he sets out to recover the struggles for emancipation that have been lost to the past.

Slavery in the President's Neighborhood

Many people think of the White House as a symbol of democracy, but it also embodies America’s complicated past.

Muskets! Axes! Revolt! Here Are the Plans for a Reenactment of an Actual 1811 Rebellion

This fall 500 Louisianans, in 19th-century attire, will re-create America’s largest plantation uprising.

In 1870, Henrietta Wood Sued for Reparations—and Won

The $2,500 verdict, the largest ever of its kind, offers evidence of the generational impact such awards can have

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