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A boulder marks the location where Brister Freeman’s house is thought to have stood.

Black People Lived in Walden Woods Long Before Henry David Thoreau

Decades before Thoreau's famous experiment, a community of formerly enslaved men and women had a much different experience of life in the woods.
William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown, Wildcat Banker

How a story told by a fugitive from slavery became a parable of American banking gone bad.
1619 Project cover

The NYT’s Jake Silverstein Concocts “a New Origin Story” for the 1619 Project

The project's editor falsifies the history of American history-writing, openly embracing the privileging of “narrative” over “actual fact.”
Still Life with Ham, 1625.

Thanksgiving and the Curse of Ham

19th-century African American writer Charles Chesnutt’s subversive literature.
Health care workers on strike, holding picket signs.
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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.
Capitol rotunda dome.

The Changing Same of U.S. History

Like the 1619 Project, two new books on the Constitution reflect a vigorous debate about what has changed in the American past—and what hasn’t.
A mural depicting the portrait of Ahmaud Arbery, on the side of a building.
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Trial of Arbery's Killers Hinges on Law that Originated in Slavery

Georgia enacted the Citizen's Arrest Law in an attempt to maintain control of enslaved people.
Illustration after American Gothic but in the context of the Black experience: African American farmers looking away, house foreclosed, lightning in the sky.

How Thousands of Black Farmers Were Forced Off Their Land

Black people own just 2 percent of farmland in the United States. A decades-long history of loan denials at the USDA is a major reason why.
Photo illustration of two hands pulling New York Times Magazine article

The Historians Are Fighting

Inside the profession, the battle over the 1619 Project continues.
Painting of British soldiers surrendering their arms to George Washington.

The Yorktown Tragedy: Washington's Slave Roundup

History books remember Yorktown as a "victory for the right of self-determination." But the battle guaranteed slavery for nearly another century.
Elmwood Cemetery, where Henry Ellett, Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward are buried

A Deadly Introduction

Who was Henry Ellett? Looking at his grave you wouldn't know much about him.
Drawing of the Pawpaw fruit (green)
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Plant of the Month: The Pawpaw

The pawpaw is finding champions again after colonizers' dismissal, increasing globalization and economic needs.
Photo of Jefferson Davis

The Southern Slaveholders Dreamed of a Slaveholding Empire

Antebellum slaveholders weren't content with an economic and social system based on trafficking in human flesh in the South alone.
Portrait drawing of Luther Martin
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For Constitution Day, Let's Toast the Losers of the Convention

Anti-federalist Luther Martin's agenda failed at the Constitutional Convention, but his criticisms of the Founders may still resonate with us today.
Portrait of Zalumma Agra

Circassian Beauty in the American Sideshow

Among P.T. Barnum's “human curiosities” was a supposed escapee from an Ottoman harem, marketed as both the pinnacle of white beauty and an exotic other.
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?
Joe Biden

How Joe Biden Became Irish

The president has skillfully played up his Irish roots, but the story of his ancestry is more complicated.
Bell in 1980. He handled civil-rights cases, then came to question their impact.

The Man Behind Critical Race Theory

As an attorney, Derrick Bell worked on many civil-rights cases, but his doubts about their impact launched a groundbreaking school of thought.
Man kneeling in crowd in front of police

On Our Knees

What the history of a gesture can tell us about Black creative power.
Depiction of an agricultural fair with crowds of people gathered around exhibit halls.

Slavery, Technology and the Social Origins of the US Agricultural State

Ariel Ron discusses the rise of the agricultural state in his book, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic.
Cuban Women class photo at Harvard University in the summer of 1900.

‘Cuba: An American History’ Review: That Infernal Little Republic

Cuba has spent its entire existence as a state and much of its late colonial past in Uncle Sam’s purported backyard.
African American man teaching a boy to swim in a swimming pool.
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Black Swimmers Overcome Racism and Fear, Reclaiming a Tradition

Today, drowning rates are disproportionately high among Black children. What’s being done?
Boats moored in the water in front of a row of houses on the beach. Photo by Amani Willett.

Nantucket Doesn’t Belong to the Preppies

The island was once a place of working-class ingenuity and Black daring.
Join or Die woodcut of a chopped up rattlesnake representing un-unified colonies.
partner

The Serpents of Liberty

From the colonial period to the end of the US Civil War, the rattlesnake sssssssymbolized everything from evil to unity and power.
A cracked picture of Washington crossing the Delaware River.

The Incoherence of American History

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Would Really Hate Your Twitter Feed

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.
The Fuller Court

Whose Side Is the Supreme Court On?

The Supreme Court and the pursuit of racial equality.
An American Flag with opening one of the stripes like a door

The Slippery Matter of ‘Truth’ in Patriotic Education

Laws against teaching critical race theory might backfire on Republicans.
Map of Charleston Harbor, 1822.

Elkison v. Deliesseline: The South Carolina Negro Seaman Act of 1822 in Federal Court

Elkison v. Deliesseline presented a federal court with the question of whether a state could incarcerate and enslave a free subject of a foreign government.
Statue of Dred Scott and wife

Allegiance, Birthright, and Race in America

What the Dred Scott v. Sandford case meant for black citizenship.

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