Frederick Douglass

How African-Americans in Early America celebrated the Declaration of Independence's ideals, even as basic freedoms were denied to them.

Historical narratives of the United States have never not been shaped by an anxiety about the end of it all. Are we a new Rome or a new Zion?

Why Southerners protesting structural racism in the criminal justice system have turned time and again to the monuments in their communities.

The paper’s series on slavery made avoidable mistakes. But the attacks from its critics are much more dangerous.

On Hosea Easton’s and David Walker’s attempts to debunk scientific racism.

What the president understood that the zealous Republican reformers in Congress didn’t.

The Editor of the American Historical Review weighs in on recent historiographical debates around the New York Times' 1619 Project.

Activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected—and what it means to preserve them.

If there’s anything the 2010s taught us, it’s that there is no getting these stories right, no honoring with grace the dead and ghosts.

After an African-American cemetery was bulldozed, families wondered what happened to the graves.

A review of Lewis Hyde’s “A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past.”

As part of its “1619” inquiry into slavery's legacy, The New York Times revives 19th century revisionist history on the founding.

It made it impossible to limit the size and scope of the federal government. Conservatives need to recognize that.

On the integrated Union regiments composed of white, black, and native men who fought in the Civil War's western theatre.

By naming a common enemy the Union Army was able to build and then steer a coalition of Americans toward the systematic destruction of slavery.

1776 began as a petty squabble among odious and powerful elites. It soon became the lodestar of emancipatory movements everywhere.

The declaration's words and sentiments have inspired nations and movements around the world.

A new book rescues the Poor People’s Campaign from its reputation as a desperate last cry of the civil rights movement.

How do you make a family tree when you may not know your family history?

A brief history of the Massachusetts suffrage movement, and it's opposition, told through images of the time.