The Mean Girls Game for DS

Meet the YouTubers Determined to Find Lost Media

New media meets old.
Female photographer standing behind camera, next to man in uniform holding suitcase.

Midwestern Exposure

Zooming in on the places where early women photographers could build a career.
Red binder pulled from row of blue binders

Serendipity in the Archives

Or, a lost freedom story I found while looking for something else.

Mocking the Klan

Was cartoonist Billy Ireland’s pen really mightier than the burning crosses of the KKK?
A family posing for a picture on a porch

Porch Memories

An architectural historian invites us to sit with her awhile on the American porch.
Side profile of Julia Grant

Julia Dent Grant’s Personal Memoirs as a Plantation Narrative

Her memoirs contribute to the inaccurate post-Civil War memory of the Southern plantation.
People standing in the National WWII Museum

What Should You Do With a Captured Nazi Flag?

During WWII, American soldiers brought the flags home as a remembrance. Now, family members and historians must decide what should become of them.
A man holds an axe head between his fingers

After Defeating Hernando de Soto, the Chickasaw Took his Stuff and Remade It

The site offers rare evidence of interactions between de Soto and Indigenous people.
A Historian looking at a document

An Archivist Sneezes on a Priceless Document. Then What?

What, exactly, does history lose when an archive-worthy text is destroyed?
An image of the diary of John Claypoole, third husband of Betsy Ross.

Betsy Ross’s Husband’s Diary Turned Up in a Garage. Here’s What it Tells Us About The Flagmaker.

The 240-year-old journal of John Claypoole, a Revolutionary War POW and later the third husband of Betsy Ross, sheds light on the flagmaker.
Smithsonian anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide points out details in the sculptures depicting the faces of two enslaved African Americans who labored at Catoctin Furnace in the late 1700s or early 1800s

Faces of the Dead Emerge From Lost African American Graveyard

The bones of enslaved furnace workers tell the grim story of their lives.
Picture of a computer.

The Internet Is Rotting

Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
A photo from the 1976 edition of the People's Yellow Pages shows the publication's volunteers assembled before the Vocations for Social Change office in Cambridge

Why The People's Yellow Pages, A Relic Of '70s Counterculture, Still Resonates Today

Fifty years later, The Yellow Pages stand as a testament to grassroots ingenuity and the radical idealism of '70s counterculture.
Illustration of a stick figure on a ladder adding to very tall stacks of paper

Living Memory

Black archivists, activists, and artists are fighting for justice and ethical remembrance — and reimagining the archive itself.

From the FBI Mailbag: Waco, 1993

America's suggestions for handling the Waco standoff, as found in FBI FOIA files.
An African American woman standing on a porch with three young children

The House Archives Built

How racial hierarchies are embedded within the archival standards and practices that legitimize historical memory.
Illustration of 1844 Philadelphia riots

When Philadelphia Became a Battlefield, Its Surgeons Bore Witness

The surgeons’ observations survive thanks to a remarkable document: an eleven-page published report presented to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Laundresses with Union soldiers, circa 1863.

On Juneteenth, Three Stirring Stories of How Enslaved People Gained Their Freedom

Millions of Americans gained freedom from slavery in a slow-moving wave of emancipation during the Civil War and in the months afterward.
Glass with spilled rainbow alcohol

Chasing 'Phantoms of the Past': Gay & Lesbian Bar Archivists on Preserving LGBTQ+ Nightlife History

VinePair interviewed eight LGBTQ+ archivers around the country about documenting America’s gay and lesbian bars while they still can.
Two women each holding camphor, which is on a string around their necks.

Flu, 1918

Remembering a year of hell and devastation—the year of the Spanish flu.
Still from upcoming short film “Write No History” by Black Quantum Futurism, 2021.

Project: Time Capsule

Time capsules unearthed at affordable housing sites offer alternative, lost, and otherwise obscured histories.
One of Jerry Weller's photo albums, with notes that Patti May gave to GLAPN identifying people in the pictures.

The Precious, Precarious Work of Queer Archiving in the Pacific Northwest

Local legacy-keepers are working to ensure that the histories aren't lost or forgotten.
Section of a page from Hannah Alspaugh’s fabric scrapbook.

This Fabric Scrapbook Offers a Surprisingly Emotional Portrait of 19th-Century Life

Back when most people made their clothes, one swatch could carry many stories.
Destruction from the Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921.

Reflections on the Artifacts Left Behind From the Tulsa Race Massacre

Objects and documents, says the Smithsonian historian Paul Gardullo, offer a profound opportunity for reckoning with a past that still lingers.
Old photos of Civil War soldiers

Interrupted Sentiments: The Lost Letters of Civil War Soldiers

The incredible story of thousands of soldier photographs and letters that never made it home.
Illustration of Henry Brown in a box

Rare Ephemera Shows Legacy of Henry "Box" Brown

In his day, Brown was a celebrated stage magician who incorporated performance into his lectures on abolitionism in the United States and England.

The Secret Papers of Lee Atwater, Who Invented the Scurrilous Tactics That Trump Normalized

An infamous Republican political operative’s unpublished memoir shows how the Party came to embrace lies, racial fearmongering, and winning at any cost.
Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman’s Lost Maryland Home Found, Archaeologists Say

The famed abolitionist’s father, Ben Ross, sheltered her and family on the Eastern Shore in the 1840s.
A graphic featuring art and archival storage.

NFTs and AI Are Unsettling the Very Concept of History

Non-fungible tokens and artificial intelligence make tracing the origins of a digital object more fragile. What are the world’s archivists to do?
Scott Jordan in his apartment.

The Artifact Artist

New York’s 300-year-old trash becomes treasure in the hands of an urban archaeologist.