Two images: Lajpat Rai (left) and W.E.B. Du Bois (right).
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Black Freedom and Indian Independence

Activists including W. E .B. Du Bois in the United States and Lajpat Rai in India drew connections between Black American and Indian experiences of white rule.
Illustration of the Georgia Peach.
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The Georgia Peach: A Labor History

The peach industry represented a new, scientifically driven economy for Georgia, but it also depended on the rhythms and racial stereotypes of cotton farming.
Two people calling on AT&T PicturePhone.
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A Prehistory of Zoom

Concerns about privacy and pressures regarding the physical appearance of women and their homes contributed to the failure of AT&T’s 1960s Picturephone.
An 1890s advertising poster for Coca Cola featuring a well-to-do white woman.
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Who Took the Cocaine Out of Coca-Cola?

The medical profession saw nothing wrong with offering a cocaine-laced cola to white, middle-class consumers. Selling it to Black Americans was another matter.
Star-Herb Medicines and Teas for all Diseases, 1923.
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How Government Helped Birth the Advertising Industry

Advertising went from being an embarrassing activity to a legitimate part of every company’s business plans—despite scant evidence that it worked.
The 19-year-old Indian elephant, Fritz-Frederic, favorite of the children of Paris, was put to death after he had gone mad for several days, c. 1910.
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Elephant Executions

At the height of circus animal acts in the late nineteenth century, animals who killed their captors might be publicly executed for their “crimes.”
Map of New York state from 1813
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Suppressing the Black Vote in 1811

As more Black men gained the right to vote in New York, the state began to change its laws to reduce their power or disenfranchise them completely.
Living history interpreter demonstrating a mortar and pestle in a historic kitchen.
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The Countercultural History of Living Museums

In the 1960s and ’70s, guides began wearing period costumes and farming with historical techniques, a change that coincided with the back-to-the-land movement.
A poster of a colonial man ringing a bell in front of Independence Hall with the words "4 Minute Men" at the top
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The US Propaganda Machine of World War I

As the United States prepared to enter World War I, the government created the first modern state propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information.
People scavenging through garbage on a barge in New York City
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A History of Garbage

The history of garbage dumps is the history of America.
Post card depicting coal miners in PA
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When Did Americans Start Using Fossil Fuel?

The nineteenth-century establishment of mid-Atlantic coal mines and canals gave America its first taste of abundant fossil fuel energy.
Cotton plants.
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Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton

Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
A group of black prisoners, shoveling.
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Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment

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.
Father sitting with children
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The Rise of the Domestic Husband

In the late 1800s, advice writers targeting white, middle-class Americans began encouraging men to become more engaged in the emotional lives of their households.
A view of the Grand Canyon.
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When the Government Tried to Flood the Grand Canyon

In the 1960s, the government proposed the construction of two dams in the Grand Canyon, potentially flooding much of Grand Canyon National Park.
Stevia flowers
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Stevia’s Global Story

Native to Paraguay, Ka’a he’e followed a circuitous path through Indigenous medicine, Japanese food science, and American marketing to reach the US sweeteners market.
Convalescing Civil War soldiers with crutches
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The Post-Civil War Opioid Crisis

Many servicemen became addicted to opioids prescribed during the war. Society viewed their dependency as a lack of manliness.
Arab American man holding child with American flag.
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How Arab-Americans Stopped Being White

With the emergence of the US as a global superpower in the twentieth-century, anti-Palestinian stereotypes in the media bled over to stigmatize Arab Americans.
Exchange Coffee House illustration
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The First American Hotels

In the eighteenth century, if people in British North America had to travel, they stayed at public houses that were often just repurposed private homes.
The sixty-four hexagrams from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.
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The I Ching in America

Europeans translated the "Chinese Book of Changes" in the nineteenth century, but the philosophy really took off in the West after 1924.
President Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Main Street, minutes before the assassination
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JFK’s Assassination and “Doing Your Own Research”

Revelations about secret government programs after Kennedy’s assassination increased the power of conspiracy theories.
Nineteenth century nuclear family.
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How Government Helped Create the “Traditional” Family

Since the mid-nineteenth century, many labor regulations in the US have been crafted with the express purpose of strengthening the male-breadwinner family.
Cattle in Nevada, 1973 (and a UFO)
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The 1970s Cow Mutilation Mystery

When ranchers began reporting incidents of mutilated cattle, the ensuring panic fed both conspiracy theories and a growing cynicism about the government.
Two youths in Uptown Chicago, 1974.
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When Uptown Chicago was “Hillbilly Heaven”

In the 1960s, white Appalachian workers attempted to put down roots in Chicago by building an integrated model neighborhood called Hank Williams Village.