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How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope

Before its subversion in the Jim Crow era, the fruit symbolized black self-sufficiency.
by Bill Black via The Atlantic on December 8, 2014
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How Suffering Shaped Emancipation

Jim Downs discusses the plight of freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
by Jim Downs, Robin Lindley via HNN on August 6, 2012
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Who Invented Memorial Day?

As Americans enjoy the holiday weekend, does anyone know how Memorial Day originated?
by Jim Downs via HNN on May 28, 2012

A Topic Best Avoided

After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln faced the issue of sorting out a nation divided over the issue of freed slaves. But what were his views on it?
by Nicholas Guyatt via London Review of Books on December 1, 2011
Political cartoon of Freedman's Bureau agent separating angry whites from defensive freedmen.

The Freedmen's Bureau

“No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth: What shall be done with slaves?”
by W.E.B. Du Bois via The Atlantic on March 1, 1901
A drawing of Confederate soldiers on horseback violently forcing Black people to walk south.

After Confederate Forces Took Their Children, These Black Mothers Fought to Reunite Their Families

Confederates kidnapped free Black people to sell into slavery. After the war, two women sought help from high places to track down their lost loved ones.
by Robert K. D. Colby via Smithsonian on February 6, 2025
A girl in Native American tribal regalia being crowned as homecoming queen.

The Complex Politics of Tribal Enrollment

How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?
by Rachel Monroe via The New Yorker on November 20, 2024
Run on a bank during the Great Depression.

The Radical Past and Future of Debt Resistance

The deep roots of debt relief activism in the United States.
by Astra Taylor via The Nation on September 25, 2024
John Andrew Jackson riding a galloping horse and tipping his hat.
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How Do We Tell a Tale of People Who Sought to Disappear?

The life of John Andrew Jackson — and the vacillating richness and scarcity of the archive.
by Susanna Ashton via HNN on August 13, 2024
Harriet Tubman.

The Radical Faith of Harriet Tubman

A new book conveys in dramatic detail what America’s Moses did to help abolish slavery. Another addresses the love of God and country that helped her do so.
by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on June 24, 2024
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 11, 2024
A rider from the 9th US Cavalry, one of several segregated units called the Buffalo Soldiers.

Meet The Black Cowboys Who Shaped Colorado History

The gunslingers, innovators, and explorers who carved their destinies from the sprawling promise of the West.
by Corey Buhay via Atlas Obscura on May 29, 2024

An Unholy Traffic: How the Slave Trade Continued Through the US Civil War

In a new book, Robert KD Colby of the University of Mississippi shows how the Confederacy remained committed to slavery.
by Rich Tenorio via The Guardian on April 28, 2024
Map of New York state from 1813

Suppressing the Black Vote in 1811

As more Black men gained the right to vote in New York, the state began to change its laws to reduce their power or disenfranchise them completely.
by Livia Gershon, Sarah L. H. Gronningsater via JSTOR Daily on February 23, 2024

Slavery and the Journal — Reckoning with History and Complicity

Reexamining biases and injustices that the New England Journal of Medicine has historically helped to perpetuate.
by Evelynn M. Hammonds, David S. Jones, Scott H. Podolsky, Meghan Bannon Kerr via The New England Journal Of Medicine on December 7, 2023
The Fisk Jubilee Singers.

How the Negro Spiritual Changed American Popular Music—And America Itself

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Picture of Frederick Douglass overlaid on a poster advertising a speech of his.

The Annotated Frederick Douglass

In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of "The Atlantic."
by Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
African American man looking at a dilapidated house

A New Doc, "Silver Dollar Road," Chronicles the Dispossession of Black Americans

"It's the story of a family who had been denied justice about a piece of land they owned for at least 160 years."
by Raoul Peck, Ed Rampell via Jacobin on October 20, 2023
Illustration by Kat Brooks of Stephanie Gilbert and her great grandfather Oliver Cromwell Gilbert and his home.

She Cherished the Home Where Her Family Fled Slavery. Then a Stranger Bought It.

Would the new owner of Richland Farm let a Black woman continue to visit to pay tribute to her enslaved ancestors?
by Sydney Trent via Washington Post on August 5, 2023
An ad for a runaway slave in the Virginia Gazette, describing Thomas Greenwich, an "East-India Indian."
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“Of the East India Breed …”

The first South Asians in British North America.
by Brinda Charry via HNN on May 7, 2023
Old millhouse down a garden path.

Reclaiming a North Carolina Plantation

On a former plantation in Durham, a land conservancy and two determined sisters are pioneering a model for providing land to Black gardeners and farmers.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Garden & Gun on April 24, 2023
A hand-colored 1892 print of the Battle of Fort Pillow, which shows Confederate soldiers massacreing Black soldiers and civilians with knives and bayonets.

At Fort Pillow, Confederates Massacred Black Soldiers After They Surrendered

Targeted even when unarmed, around 70 percent of the Black Union troops who fought in the 1864 battle died as a result of the clash.
by Erin L. Thompson via Smithsonian on April 10, 2023
Sketch of a gathering of African Americans gathering in a meetinghouse.

“Nativity Gives Citizenship”: Teaching Antislavery Constitutionalism Through Black Conventions

The demand of antislavery activists for accused fugitives to be guaranteed a jury trial was an implicit recognition of Black citizenship.
by Erik J. Chaput via Commonplace on March 7, 2023
A Coal miner, his wife and two of their children in Bertha Hill, West Virginia, September 1938.

How Black Folks Have Built Resilient Spaces for Themselves in US Mountains

Did you know that there was a hidden utopia of formerly enslaved people located in the mountains of Appalachia?
by Cameron Oglesby via Earth In Color on February 1, 2023
The emancipation proclamation.
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The Emancipation Proclamation Sparked Fierce Resistance. That Matters Today.

Remembering the mixed reception is key to understanding the complexities of our history and the persistence of racism today.
by Brianna Frakes via Made By History on January 31, 2023
Two Choctaw men

Choctaw Confederates

Some Native Americans chose to fight for the Southern cause.
by Fay A. Yarbrough via Humanities on January 11, 2023
The statue Sons of St. Augustine depicting Alexander Darnes and Edmund Kirby Smith.

The Doctor and the Confederate

A historian’s journey into the relationship between Alexander Darnes and Edmund Kirby Smith starts with a surprising eulogy.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Smithsonian on January 10, 2023
Map of Beaufort, South Carolina during the time of Rose Goethe's life.

“They Cleaned Me Out Entirely”

An enslaved woman’s experience with General Sherman’s army.
by Bridget Laramie Kelly via The Metropole on October 4, 2022
A rider hangs tough during a rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York, 1957.

A Brief History of the Rodeo

The humble origins and complex future of cowboy competition.
by Lila Thulin, Chris La Tray via Smithsonian on July 7, 2022
Kris Manjapra standing outside by a wall. He examines the history of when slavery ended, emancipation laws kept the enslaved in bondage—and rewarded the enslavers.

How Slavery Ended Slowly, and Emancipation Laws Often Kept the Enslaved in Bondage

Tufts Professor Kris Manjapra examines the history of the injustice of abolition in the U.S. and abroad and the need for reparations in his new book.
by Taylor McNeil via TuftsNow on June 15, 2022
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