W.E.B. Du Bois

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?

A review of "C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian."

A new history of the Civil War and Reconstruction examines the ways in which Black Americans formed networks of self-reliance in their pursuit of emancipation.

During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration demonstrated that a progressive agenda and effective anti-inflationary measures could overlap.

Contrary to popular belief, the South has always been the key to defining the promise and limits of American democracy.

A new book traces how the writing of American history, from Reconstruction on, has falsified and illuminated our racial past.

The Supreme Court has watered down the policy’s core justification: justice.

The emergence of the supermarket was used as a key piece of anti-communist propaganda early in the twentieth century against the alternative of grocery co-ops.

The story of philanthropists Catherine Williams Ferguson and Isabella Marshall Graham’s unlikely interracial collaboration.

Visualizing the legacy of slavery and redlining, 1860 to the present.

Looking back at the short but deep friendship of John Brown and Harriet Tubman, who gave their lives to the abolitionist cause.

And Congress should claw it back.

A two-volume biography tracks the life and times of one of Harlem’s leading socialists.

"History​ is written by the victors, but diligent and continual silencing is required to maintain its claims on the present and future."