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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.
Illustration of T. Thomas Fortune

Abolition Democracy’s Forgotten Founder

While W. E. B. Du Bois praised an expanding penitentiary system, T. Thomas Fortune called for investment in education and a multiracial, working-class movement.
Bernard Lynch's slave pen in St. Louis, with many potential buyers standing outside.

The Remarkable Story of Mattie J. Jackson

Her narrative documents the very real dangers enslaved runaways experienced while traveling through so-called "free states" of the North.
A line of black civil war soldiers holding their rifles.

Black Soldier Desertion in the Civil War

The reasons Black Union soldiers left their army during the Civil war were varied, with poor pay, family needs and racism among them.
African American students and teacher in a classroom, Henderson, KY, 1916.

The Origin Story of Black Education

As Frederick Douglass’s master put it, a slave who learned to read and write against the will of his master was tantamount to “running away with himself.”
Cameron Maynard stands at attention by the monument to Confederate soldiers at the South Carolina Statehouse on July 10, 2017, in Columbia, S.C.
partner

What We’ve Gotten Wrong About the History of Reconstruction

The erasure of Black leaders from the most misunderstood period in American history.
Health care workers on strike, holding picket signs.
partner

Are We Witnessing a ‘General Strike’ in Our Own Time?

W.E.B. Du Bois defined the shift from slavery to freedom as a “general strike” — and there are parallels to today.
Portrait of Robert Carter III

Like Washington and Jefferson, He Championed Liberty. Unlike the Founders, He Freed his Slaves

The little-known story of Robert Carter III.
A group of formerly enslaved people at a county almshouse, c. 1900.

Juneteenth Is About Freedom

On Juneteenth, we should remember both the struggle against chattel slavery and the struggle for radical freedom during Reconstruction.
Laundresses with Union soldiers, circa 1863.

On Juneteenth, Three Stirring Stories of How Enslaved People Gained Their Freedom

Millions of Americans gained freedom from slavery in a slow-moving wave of emancipation during the Civil War and in the months afterward.
Ashton Villa in Galveston

Celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston

I had sung the Black National Anthem countless times, but hearing those words reverberate around me in this place, on this day, moved me in a new way.
107th U.S. Colored Troops posing for a picture

People, Not “Voices” or “Bodies,” Make History

We need to do far more than “give voice to the voiceless" to win justice.
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.
Still from upcoming short film “Write No History” by Black Quantum Futurism, 2021.

Project: Time Capsule

Time capsules unearthed at affordable housing sites offer alternative, lost, and otherwise obscured histories.
Roadside memorial for Ma’Khia Bryant
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Child Welfare Systems Have Long Harmed Black Children Like Ma’Khia Bryant

Instead of caring for Black children, child welfare systems subject them to abuse and harsh conditions.
Worshipers at a Pentecostal church, Chicago, 1941

A Praise House of Many Mansions

In a book and documentary series, Henry Louis Gates Jr. offers a wide-ranging tour of Black religion in America.
Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman’s Lost Maryland Home Found, Archaeologists Say

The famed abolitionist’s father, Ben Ross, sheltered her and family on the Eastern Shore in the 1840s.
President Biden in a warehouse
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Government Has Always Picked Winners and Losers

A welfare state doesn't distort the market; it just makes government aid fairer.
engraving of a slave ship

Why Did the Slave Trade Survive So Long?

The history of the Atlantic slave trade after the American Revolution is a story of sustained efforts to suppress it even as demand for slaves increased.
engraving of Harriet Beecher Stowe
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A Forgotten 19th-Century Story Can Help Us Navigate Today’s Political Fractures

Reconciliation is good — but not at any cost.
Photographs from Tulsa shaped into a three-dimensional sculpture.

The Unrealized Promise of Oklahoma

How the push for statehood led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence.
Cleo Davis and Kayin Talton Davis are artists and activists who have made it their mission to preserve and celebrate African American history in Portland. Here, their daughter, Ifetayo Davis, stands with her father and sisters outside their home.

Oregon Once Legally Banned Black People. Has the State Reconciled its Racist Past?

Oregon became ground zero of America’s racial reckoning protests last summer. But activists say it doesn’t know its own history.
Rev. Timothy McDonald III in First Iconium Baptist Church
partner

Attacking Sunday Voting is Part of a Long Tradition of Controlling Black Americans

The centuries-long battle over Sunday activities is really about African Americans' freedom and agency.
Richard Allen (above) and Absalom Jones' "A Refutation". book cover

How the Politics of Race Played Out During the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic

Free blacks cared for those infected with yellow fever even as their own lives were imperiled.
A home in Paramus, New Jersey.

Slavery's Legacy Is Written All Over North Jersey, If You Know Where to Look

New Jersey was known as the slave state of the North, and our early economy was built on unpaid labor.
Illustration of the Reconstruction era, with black men waving flags and listening to a speech in front of a governmet building while a white mob comes to attack them with clubs

America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama

When I think about the 1870 riot, I remember how the country rejected the opportunity it had.
A picture of the Dudley Diggs House

At William & Mary, a School for Free and Enslaved Black Children is Rediscovered

Opened in 1760, the school may be the oldest still-standing building of its kind.
Black Students Matter demonstrators march through Washington, D.C., June 19, 2020
partner

My Great-Grandmother Ida B. Wells Left A Legacy Of Activism In Education. We Need That Now.

The gap in education equality is holding America back.
Deputy sheriff at county fair in Gonzales, Texas.

New Sheriff in Town

Law enforcement and the urban-rural divide.
An illustration of Black men pulling a platform covered in trash and American symbols.

What Price Wholeness?

A new proposal for reparations for slavery raises three critical questions: How much does America owe? Where will the money come from? And who gets paid?

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