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Aerial photo of housing projects in the Bronx.

Suffering, Grace and Redemption: How The Bronx Came to Be

On the early history of New York City's northernmost borough.
1950s office worker holding a handkerchief to his brow.

How Air Conditioning Took Over the American Office

Before AC, office workers relied on building design to adapt to high temperatures. The promise of boosted productivity created a different kind of workplace.
Three workers taking a break inside a salt mine in the 1940s.

Salt of the Earth

In Winn Parish, an ancient salt dome has sustained life for centuries.
Drawing showing teacher in front of the blackboard while students look bored in the back of the classroom.

Why Professors Can’t Teach

For as long as universities have existed, academics have struggled to impart their knowledge to students. The failing is fixable—if Washington demands it.
A crystal ball reflecting a landscape.

50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974

A half-century ago, "Saturday Review" asked some of the era's visionaries for their predictions of what 2024 would look like. Here are their hits and misses.
Day laborer pumping up tire on tractor on large farm near Ralls, Texas, 1939.
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Stories of the Land: Diverse Agricultural Histories in the U.S.

An exhibit featuring public radio and television programs broadcast over 65 years that explore American agricultural life.
Factory cloth samples.

Chinese Production, American Consumption

The convergence of economy and politics in the Sino-US relationship via Jonathan Chatwin’s “The Southern Tour” and Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson’s “Made in China.”
Textile workers in Massachusetts Striking for Wages.

Forces of Labor: The Minimum Wage

The federal minimum wage has not risen in over 15 years. We analyze why.
General president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O'Brien speaks during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15, 2024.

A Return to Gompers

Sean O’Brien’s speech at the RNC may represent a return to nonpartisan realpolitik for unions. But does that reflect labor's strength or its decline?
Engraving of the Battle of Lexington After Alonzo Chappel: American colonists and British soldiers exchange fire at the Battle of Lexington, the first skirmish in the US War of Independence.

Taking Up the American Revolution’s Egalitarian Legacy

Despite its failures and limitations, the American Revolution unleashed popular aspirations to throw off tyranny of all kinds.
A wall of tools and cups designed to collect gum for turpentine production.

Turpentine in Time

The hard labor behind what was once one of the nation's most significant industries.
Painting of abstract lines obscuring faces on the cover of "Feeling Asian American" by Wen Liu.

Racial Hierarchies: Japanese American Immigrants in California

The belief of first-generation Japanese immigrants in their racial superiority over Filipinos was a by-product of the San Joaquin Delta's white hegemony.
Illustration of the Georgia Peach.

The Georgia Peach: A Labor History

The peach industry represented a new, scientifically driven economy for Georgia, but it also depended on the rhythms and racial stereotypes of cotton farming.
Mrs. Ernest Ortega, from Reseda, holding a large lemon from her tree.

Lemons in LA

How the fruit helped create the California dream.
A drilling crew in the Hawk's Nest Tunnel.

On Raymond Thompson’s “Appalachian Ghost”

Black miners were intentionally erased from the record of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster. A new book reinserts them into the narrative.
A painting of a crowd of people heading through gates labeled Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.

Fog From Harlem: Recovering a New Negro Renaissance in the American Midwest

How the focus on Harlem obfuscated Black culture in the Midwest.
A Black female welder circa 1930s-1940s.

A Sweeping History of the Black Working Class

By focusing on the Black working class and its long history, Blair LM Kelley’s book, "Black Folk," helps tell the larger story of American democracy.
Poster for the WPA theatrical production of "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis

Stealing the Show

Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater.
Detail from "the Book of Negroes," listing Arthur Bowler and his family, 1783.

Eight Clues

Recovering a life in fragments, Arthur Bowler in slavery and freedom.
The White House.

How the Labor of Enslaved Black Men Built the White House

On the construction of America's new capital city.
Sailors singing a sea shanty.

There’s No Such Thing as “Just a Song”

What we can learn from the history of maritime folk music.
San Francisco Communist Party marching in May Day parade, 1935.

California Communism and Its Afterlives

A new book explores the Communist Party's western base and its alliance with the labor movement.
Spindle boys in Georgia cotton mill.
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America Has Been Having the Same Debate About Child Labor for 100 Years

A century ago, debates about the failed Child Labor Amendment turned on larger issues about work, childhood, and the role of government.
A print titled "Heroes of the Colored Race," centered on portraits of Blanche Bruce, Frederick Douglas, and Hiram Revels.

Slavery, Capitalism, and the Politics of Abolition

"The Reckoning," Robin Blackburn’s monumental history, offers a dizzying account of the politics behind slavery's rise and fall.
Map of the Chesapeake Bay.

Our Local Monster

Whose knowledge matters in a changing region?
The Bahá’í House of Worship, a tall, ornate building made of concrete, illuminated against a cloudy sky.

The Beauty of Concrete

Why are buildings today simple and austere, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately ornamented? The answer is not the cost of labor.
A young girl tends the spinning machine at a cotton mill in North Carolina.
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The Forgotten History of the Child Labor Amendment

State-level rollbacks to child labor protections show the need for a constitutional amendment introduced 100 years ago.
Black nurses and Sea View Hospital.

The ‘Black Angels’ Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

Professional nurses who moved north during the Great Migration worked in New York City’s most contagious sanatorium — and changed the course of public health.
Ella Watson in American Gothic, photographed by Gordon Parks.

She Was No ‘Mammy’

Gordon Parks’s most famous photograph, "American Gothic," was of a cleaning woman in Washington, D.C. She has a story to tell.
Haymarket riot, as depicted in Harpers Magazine.

May Day is a Rust Belt Holiday

Forged in the cauldron of Chicago’s streets and factories, born from the experience of workers in the mills and plants of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.

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