Culture

The cabaret law—and its prejudicial history—is one of the city's darkest secrets.

"Get Off the Track!" borrowed the melody of a racist hit song and helped give a public voice to the abolitionist movement.

Cedric Robinson has a great deal to teach us about Trumpism and the significance of resistance in determining the future.

The story of how The Band, in Robbie Robertson's words, "acted out an ideal of democracy and equality."

The national dish is really a fusion of immigrant fare.

Every single New York Times front page since 1852 in under a minute. Hint: Pay attention to the images!

"Deletionists" are rapidly removing content from Wikiedpia; often, the lost material is created by those who struggle to be heard.

The history of immigrants in the U.S. teaches that no amount of assimilation will protect you when an alien requires conjuring.

"Big Mama" does what all blues greats do: she telegraphs endurance and force to whomever out there in TV land might need it. This is blues perfection.

The 19th century singer forced critics and audiences to reconcile their ears with their racism.

An analysis of the Carnegie Commission's 1967 report shows that public broadcasting has always been a politically fraught issue.

With roots in race and gender discord, has the “tomboy” label worn out its welcome?

Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer lived in an open lesbian relationship and helped found the field of home economics.

Seventy-four years ago today, lawmakers passed an amendment to the U.S. Flag Code.

A new book by Sarah Archer explores the influence of the Space Race and Cold War on America's midcentury Christmas celebrations.

“Yes, Virginia” is the most reprinted newspaper piece in American history, and this guy wrote it.

How postwar Christmas embraced spaceships, nukes, and cellophane.

Subterranean metaphors have been a powerful tool of political resistance. Today, is there anywhere left to hide?

Unreleased tracks show an alternate Dylan: not the folky bard of the standard biographies, but the hippest young blues singer in Greenwich Village.

There are two critical periods for Christmas. One is the Victorian era. The other is the 1960s.

Why Pilgrims would be stunned by our "traditional" Thanksgiving table, and other surprising truths about the invention of our national holiday.

In the 1820s, Sarah Hale, a New England widow and the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book made it her mission to get Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday.

The nineteenth-century bourgeoisie used morality to assert class dominance — something elites still do today.

An interview with horror historian David J. Skal.

Johnny Appleseed was based on a real person, John Chapman, who was eccentric enough without the legends.

In the 1970s and 1980s, homeowners were terrified by the idea that they didn't own the land they'd just bought.

In 1956, Ed Sullivan showed America what nuclear war looks like. We were never the same again.

Blackboards will endure as symbols of learning long after they’ve disappeared from schools.

And how the Rolling Stones, a band in love with black music, helped lead the way to rock’s segregated future.

How an African instrument got a racist reinvention.