Frederick Douglass

A bold new photographic project asks modern-day Americans to recreate portraits of their 19th-century ancestors in painstakingly accurate fashion.

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”

In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.

To address these atrocities and treat Jewish victims, survivors, and families with dignity, we must confront Israel’s subjugation of Palestine.

Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.

King offered Americans the choice between acting in accordance with the Constitution and resistance to change.  In many ways, we face the same choice today.

On the complex relationship between Black Americans and the Black church.

The real history of Juneteenth is much messier—and more inspiring.

David Hackett Fischer's book "African Founders" should be the starting point for any reflection on the enduring African ­influence on American national ideals.

Archival records of Black southerners' military desertion tribunals can be read as a distinct form of political action.

Instead of using the Underground Railroad as a route north, thousands of enslaved Black people fled to communities in the South.

A new book argues that the American right emerged out of a backlash to multiracial democracy following the Civil War.

The bonfire was a public spectacle for Black people, as well as any white dissenters. It was a calculated warning.

The author of a book about William Still unearths new details about the leading Black abolitionist—and reflects on his lost legacy.

Enslaved women’s experiences with war must be extended to include the everyday warfare of slavery.

The senator from Massachusetts and the birth of the Republican Party.

The famous historian makes the claim that the demigods of American historical mythology can help us carve paths through our forbidding 21st-century wilderness.

Tying the fight for equal rights to the founders and the Constitution has worked before.

Ken Burns’ account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering.

Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America.