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A custodian moving furniture in the Capitol building.

The 'Racial Caste System' at the U.S. Capitol

After the Capitol was cleared of insurrectionists on January 6, it wasn't lost on many that cleaning up the mess would fall largely to Black and Brown people.
Black and white photo of a family sitting around the television together

A Brief History of Consumer Culture

Over the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.
Statue of "Freedom" on top of the U.S. Capitol

Philip Reed, The Enslaved Man Who Rescued Freedom

The ironies abound in the story of Reed, who made it possible to erect the statue that remains on the top of the Capitol dome today.

On the Insidious ‘Laziness Lie’ at the Heart of the American Myth

Devon Price wonders why we equate sloth with evil.
An illustration of a miner breaking off a piece of the star in the style of the "Hamilton: An American Musical" logo.

Talk Like a Red: A Labor History in Two Acts

It’s a simple process that recurs throughout history: workers see injustice, they organize each other, and they fight for change.
African American men who escaped slavery at a US Army Camp.

John Wolcott Phelps’ Emancipation Proclamation

The story of John Wolcott Phelps and his push for Lincoln to emancipate all slaves.
Abstract illustration of life working remotely.

The Perpetual Disappointment of Remote Work

What the troubled history of telecommuting tells us about its future.
Thorstein Veblen in 1880, the year he graduated from Carleton College

The Prophet of Maximum Productivity

Thorstein Veblen’s maverick economic ideas made him the foremost iconoclast of the Age of Iconoclasts.
Black and white photo of a girl sitting with a baby carriage and dollhouse

The US Government Can Provide Universal Childcare — It’s Done So in the Past

There’s no reason we can’t have universal childcare that’s wildly popular and provides high-quality care — in fact, during World War II, we did.
Lithograph of mansion, Stratford Hall, in Westmoreland County, VA

Oppression in the Kitchen, Delight in the Dining Room

The story of Caesar, an enslaved chef and chocolatier in colonial Virginia.
Breakfast Room at Belle Grove Plantation in White Chapel, Louisiana

Troubled Indemnity

A history of the United States shifting the financial burden of emancipation onto enslaved people.
A newsboy holding a bag of papers.

Popular Journalism’s Day in ‘The Sun’

The penny press of the nineteenth century was a revolution in newspapers—and is a salutary reminder of lost ties between reporters and readers.
Political cartoon depicting the menace of monopolies and trusts (1899)

Degeneration Nation

How a Gilded Age best seller shaped American race discourse.
light

The Historical Cost of Light

How difficult was it to obtain artificial light before the 19th century? Well...
Elegant Boardroom

The Limits of Telecommuting

Perhaps the lesson to take from this year of living online is not about making better technology. It’s about recognizing technology’s limits.
A man sitting on a table.

A More Perfect Union

On the Black labor organizers who fought for civil rights after Reconstruction and through the twentieth century.
A car being made in a car factory

Talking About Auto Work Means Talking About Constant, Brutal Violence

It's remembered as one of the best industrial jobs a worker could get in postwar America. Less remembered is how brutal life on the factory floor was – and still is.
Lithograph of Chinese railroad workers waving to train as it comes through a mountain tunnel.

What Was It Like to Ride the Transcontinental Railroad?

The swift, often comfortable ride on the Transcontinental Railroad opened up the American West to new settlement.

The World Henry Ford Made

A new history charts the global legacy of Fordist mass production, tracing its appeal to political formations on both the left and the right.
Drawing of people picking cotton at a plantation

A Few Random Thoughts on Capitalism and Slavery

Historian James Oakes offers a critique of the New History of Capitalism.
A white picket fence

Why Does Everyone in America Think They’re Middle Class?

The “Middle Class Nation” and “American Exceptionalism” found each other late, and under specific circumstances.

The Deportation Machine

A new book documents the history of three specific mechanisms of expulsion: formal deportation, voluntary departure, and "self-deportation."
Postal workers comfort each other after a 1991 mass shooting

“I Understand Why He Did It”

On the origins of "going postal."
Film depiction of airmail pilot from the 1940s; modern postal worker.

It’s Time to Make Postal Workers Heroes Again

Delivering the mail used to be sexy and thrilling. It can be once more.

American Democracy Is in the Mail

U.S. democracy and the U.S. postal service share a long, entangled history. An attack against one signals an attack against the other.

Built to Last

When overwhelmed unemployment insurance systems malfunctioned, governments blamed the 60-year-old programming language COBOL. But what really failed?
Two drawings, one of a woman on the left and one of a man on the right

Minorcans, New Smyrna, and the American Revolution in East Florida

The little-known story of the laborers who became pawns in a Floridian struggle during the American Revolution.
Cast of the musical Hamilton, on the stage for curtain call
partner

Hamilton and the Unsung Labors of Wives

Who tells our stories has always mattered.

Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Cover-Up of Racism, Violence, and Greed

Beneath the popular folk song, “Swannanoa Tunnel” and the railroad tracks that run through Western North Carolina is a story of blood, greed, and obfuscation.
A line of Black men sit and stand in a half circle. They all where Pullman Porter uniforms.

How Black Pullman Porters Waged a Struggle for “Civil Rights Unionism”

Led by A. Philip Randolph, Black Pullman porters secured dignity on the job — and laid the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement.

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