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Museum display honoring the Black drummers of the 29th Regiment of Foot.

Black Drummers in a Redcoat Regiment

During the American Revolution, the British 29th Regiment had a tradition of including Black drummers into its ranks.
This 1925 painting depicts an idealized version of an early Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth.

How to Tell the Thanksgiving Story on Its 400th Anniversary

Scholars are unraveling the myths surrounding the 1621 feast, which found the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag cementing a newly established alliance.
Detail of Anti-Slavery Picnic at Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts (c1845) by Susan Torrey Merritt. Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

New England Kept Slavery, But Not Its Profits, At a Distance

Entangled with, yet critical of, colonial oppression and the evils of slavery, the true history of Boston can now be told.
Puritans watching a May Day celebration.

The Pilgrims' Attack on a May Day Celebration Was a Dress Rehearsal for Removing Native Americans

The Puritans had little tolerance for those who didn't conform to their vision of the world.
Iroquois Leaders

One of the Most Important American Documents You’ve Never Heard Of

Colonial lessons in civility from the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee.
A late 17th-century comb, depicting two animated figures - likely a Native American and a European - facing one another.

A 1722 Murder Spurred Native Americans' Pleas for Justice in Early America

In a new book, historian Nicole Eustace reveals Indigenous calls for meaningful restitution and reconciliation rather than retribution.
Illustration of Thomas Morton of Merrymount being arrested by Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony

Pranksters and Puritans

Why Thomas Morton seems to have taken particular delight in driving the Pilgrims and Puritans out of their minds.
Map of Massachusetts colonial frontier

The “Indianized” Landscape of Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, the inclusion of Native American names and places in local geography has obscured the violence of political and territorial dispossession.
An illustration of boats in the water.

Capitalism, Slavery, and Economic White Supremacy

On the racial wealth gap.

How America Keeps Adapting the Story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth to Match the Story We Need to Tell

The word “Plymouth” may conjure up visions of Pilgrims in search of religious freedom, but that vision does not reflect reality.
Lithograph depicting John Eliot standing in the light and preaching to the a group of solemn, reflective American Indians sitting on the ground

How Plague Reshaped Colonial New England Before the Mayflower Even Arrived

Power, plague and Christianity were closely intertwined in 17th-century New England.
A forest scene featuring people hiding behind logs.

The Jamaican Slave Insurgency That Transformed the World

From Vincent Brown's Cundill Prize-nominated "Tacky’s Revolt."
Replica of the original Plimoth Plantation.

The Complicated Legacy of the Pilgrims is Finally Coming to Light After 400 Years

Descendants of the Pilgrims have highlighted their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.

COVID-19 Didn’t Break the Food System. Hunger Was Already Here.

Like everything else in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, American food has become almost unrecognizable overnight.
A drawing of corn

Unpacking Winthrop's Boxes

Winthrop's specimens illustrated an alteration of the New World environment and the political economy of New England according to Winthrop's careful designs.
Statue of John Winthrop

"City on a Hill" and the Making of an American Origin Story

A now-famous Puritan sermon was nothing special in its own day.

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.

When Young George Washington Started a War

A just-discovered eyewitness account provides startling new evidence about who fired the shot that sparked the French and Indian War.
partner

How the Kikotan Massacre Prepared the Ground for the Arrival of the First Africans in 1619

America was built by the labor of stolen African bodies, on stolen Native American lands.

The Hopefulness and Hopelessness of 1619

Marking the 400-year African American struggle to survive and to be free of racism.

How Jamestown Abandoned a Utopian Vision and Embraced Slavery

In 1619, wealthy investors overthrew the charter that guaranteed land for everyone.

It Isn’t Independence Day For Everyone

If the British had won the Revolutionary War, things might be very different for Native Americans.
Map of New England from 1856.

The 400-Year-Old Rivalry

Understanding the rivalry between England and the Netherlands is crucial to understanding that between New England and New York.

A Symbol of Slavery — and Survival

Angela’s arrival in Jamestown in 1619 marked the beginning of a subjugation that left millions in chains.
A painting entitled "The First Thanksgiving, 1621" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (ca. 1932).

A Brief History of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday about food – but it is more specifically a holiday about food’s absence.

The Gender-Bending Style of Yankee Doodle's Macaroni

The outlandish "macaroni" style of 18th-century England blurred the boundaries of gender, as well as class and nationality.

Capitol Hill Needs Thomas Paine Memorial

Why is there still no memorial to Paine, the immigrant whose writing galvanized the American Revolution?
An engraving of a Native American group featuring a chief speaking to a group of men as women prepare cassina next to him and Europeans spectate on the other side.

The Forgotten Drink That Caffeinated North America for Centuries

Yaupon tea, a botanical cousin to yerba maté, is now almost unknown.
John White's drawing of a Powhatan village.

Powhatan People and the English at Jamestown

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

The Fallacy of 1619

Rethinking the history of Africans in early America.

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