W.E.B. Du Bois

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.

John Brown and the Secret Six—the abolitionists who funded the raid on Harpers Ferry—confronted a question as old as America: When is violence justified?

How Black support for Zionism morphed into support for Palestine.

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.

The ambivalence many Black soldiers felt toward the U.S. in WWII was matched only by the ambivalence the U.S. showed toward principles on which WWII was fought.

A journalistic view of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, work, and representation in American society.

Considering the suppressed legacy of Claude McKay’s two “lost” novels, “Amiable with Big Teeth” and “Romance in Marseille.”

A new book argues that American politics are defined by unfulfilled desire.

Sara Marcus’s recent book argues that from the Reconstruction to the AIDS era, a distinct aesthetic formed around defeat in the realm of politics.

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

From the 1920s-1940s, North, West, and South Philadelphia saw its Black population increase by 50-80% as white flight occurred.

The Black Woman’s Organizing Archive highlights work in the 19th and 20th centuries that benefitted Black women and American society as a whole.

First-person accounts of those scarred in many ways by the era’s violence suggest Reconstruction did not fail, it was overthrown by violence.

Jedediah Purdy's new book examines why the U.S. has continuously failed to qualify as a system defined by popular rule.

What we fight about when we fight about schools.

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

Firestone’s racist system of forced labor made Princeton one of the world’s foremost research universities.

From a bus line named Jim Crow to racial violence at public parks, racism shaped Philadelphia. Can we imagine a more equitable city?

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?