James Baldwin

American innocence, the possession of history, and January 6, 2021.

The very American racism of the notorious late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

A guide for the perplexed, the puzzled, and the politically confused.

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

"My job as your mother is to tell you these stories differently, and to tell you other stories that don’t get told at school.”

The murderous hysteria over white patrimony is inseparable from the private capture of both economic opportunity and political authority.

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.

Most Black Tulsans in 1921 were working class. But these days, it seems like the fate of those few blocks in and around “Black Wall Street” is all that matters.

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.

The New Yorker critic's new book is a sequel of sorts to "The Metaphysical Club."

A musicological conversation about the history and social value of Black music.

More diverse regular history classes are the key to a historically literate population.

A lethal incident of police brutality in Miami in 1979 offers just one of countless examples of the reality generations of African Americans have faced.

Cuts to public services that might mitigate poverty and promote social mobility have become a perpetual excuse for more policing.

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. City governments have demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

Sun Ra, a seminal artist of afrofuturism, embraced a unique vision of blackness.

In a sermon two weeks after MLK's funeral, Walker urged young seminarians to be hopeful and take action for making change happen. His sermon has valuable lessons today.

“Whenever there’s a tragedy in black America, there’s always been an uptick of black history courses."

In the 1960s, the precursor to PBS explored the burgeoning conservative movement, providing a remarkable window into the history of conservatism.

Mikaella Clements on the role of baths in twentieth-century literature.