Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 121–150 of 174 results. Go to first page
Drawing of Phillis Wheatley writing at a desk.

The Great American Poet Who Was Named After a Slave Ship

A new biography of Phillis Wheatley places her in her era and shows the ways she used poetry to criticize the existence of slavery.
Donellia Chives, a trustee of Penn Center.

White Gold from Black Hands: The Gullah Geechee Fight for a Legacy after Slavery

Descendants of the west Africans who picked the cotton that made Manchester rich are struggling to keep their distinct culture alive.
18th-century map of Madagascar by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin.

The Hidden Treasures of Pirate Democracy

In his final book, David Graeber looks at an experiment in radical democracy and piratical justice in Madagascar.
Sketches of animal bones superimposed on a map of rivers in the midwest.

The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Enslaved and Indigenous People

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils.
John H. Smith (left), mayor of Prichard, Alabama, unsuccessfully campaigned for the creation of an Africatown national park.

The Forgotten 1980s Battle to Preserve Africatown

A new book tells the definitive history of an Alabama community founded by survivors of the slave trade.
A plantation worker harvests palm oil fruits in Riau, Indonesia.

The Story of Palm Oil Is a Story About Capitalism

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.
Professor Wendy Roberts holding a book.

UAlbany Professor Finds New Poem by Famed Early American Poet Phillis Wheatley

Discovery of Phillis Wheatley's earliest known elegy in a commonplace book gives us important insights into her early life and how her work circulated.
Henry Arthur McArdle’s The Battle of San Jacinto (1895), depicting the final battle of the Texas Revolution of 1836.

The Long American Counter-Revolution

Historian Gerald Horne has developed a grand theory of U.S. history as a series of devastating backlashes to progress—right down to the present day.
The “Arrival of freedmen and their families at Baltimore, Maryland” circa 1865.

“The Times Requires This Testimony”: William Still’s 'The Underground Railroad'

Still’s detailed record of radical abolitionist action remains a model for creating freedom out of community and community out of freedom.
Sculpture of Olaudah Equiano, the Queen’s House, London

Olaudah Equiano’s Transnational Insights

A brief look into Equiano's life reveals that many Black figures were considerably more transnational in their movements and critiques than commonly assumed.
Trumpet vine in Bayou Bienvenue. An orange-red flower held in someone's hand.

Living Freedom Through the Maroon Landscape

Swampland communities established by self-liberated slaves in Louisiana offer a model to cope with climate disruption.
Image from the documentary "Descendant" showing a man standing on a beach looking over the water.

Reckoning with the Slave Ship Clotilda

A new documentary tells the story of the last known slave ship to enter the United States and takes on the difficult question of how to memorialize America’s history of racial violence.
AHA logo

Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present

When historians concede to discuss the past with the terms of the present, they abandon the skill set that makes them historians.
A page of the census documenting the enslaved people of John Hopkins, 1850.

Owner? Yes. Enslaver? Certainly.

Another chance to examine the terms we use and why they matter.
Botanical illustration of Black Eyed Pea plant

Plant of the Month: Black-eyed Pea

Human relationships to this global crop have been shaped by both violence and resilience.
Overhead view of Jamestown

Colonial Jamestown, Assailed By Climate Change, Is Facing Disaster

The 400-year-old site of Jamestown, Va., battered by flooding and climate change, is listed as endangered.
1861 engraving of Slaves for sale, a scene in New Orleans.

An Enduring Legacy: Financial Institutions, the Horrors of Slavery, and the Need for Atonement

Historian Daina Ramey Berry's April 2022 congressional testimony on the role of banks and insurers in US slavery.
Aerial view illustration of a slave ship

‘Who’s Black and Why?’

A new book by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran examines how 18th-century academics understood Black identity.
Illustration of a giant tree in a swamp

The Hidden and Eternal Spirit of the Great Dismal Swamp

For nearly all of its modern existence, the Great Dismal Swamp has been excluded from U.S. history. Now there’s a push to bring its significance to light.
A print based on David Gilmour Blythe's fanciful painting of Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation: Annotated

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in America on January 1, 1863. Today, we've annotated the Emancipation Proclamation for readers.
Statue of Stonewall Jackson, on its side in slings and propped up by tires, in front of its graffiti-covered pedestal.

What the 1619 Project Got Wrong

It erases the fact that, for the first 70 years of its existence, the US was roiled by intense, escalating conflict over slavery – a conflict only resolved by civil war.
James H. Sweet

From Inclusive Public Schools to Divisive Concepts

Some personal reflections from American Historical Association president James H. Sweet on the recent wave of "divisive concepts" laws.

Modern-day Culture Wars are Playing Out on Historic Tours of Slaveholding Plantations

Romanticized notions of Southern gentility are at odds with historical reality as the lives, culture and contributions of the enslaved are becoming integral on tours.
Drawing of the Pawpaw fruit (green)

Plant of the Month: The Pawpaw

The pawpaw is finding champions again after colonizers' dismissal, increasing globalization and economic needs.
Artwork by Alanna Fields of an enslaved individual.

The Dark Underside of Representations of Slavery

Will the Black body ever have the opportunity to rest in peace?
Artistic photo of John Marshall

America’s ‘Great Chief Justice’ Was an Unrepentant Slaveholder

John Marshall not only owned people; he owned many of them, and aggressively bought them when he could.
Bacon's Rebellion, 1676-1677

Bacon's Rebellion: My Pitch

A drama about an interracial uprising in colonial Virginia.
A slave in chains behind an American flag

Germany Faced its Horrible Past. Can We Do the Same?

For too long, we've ignored our real history. We must face where truth can take us.
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.

Decolonize Hipsters

The history of hipsters is a not-so-secret history of race in the Atlantic world.

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person