Place

After real estate agents invented racial covenants in the early 1900s, L.A. led the nation in using them. Their idea of 'freedom' shapes the U.S. today.

A legion of idealists dropped out of society and went back to the land. Here's a glimpse of their otherworldly residences—and the end of the social experiment.

In a planned highway widening project, 94 percent of displaced residents live in communities mostly consisting of Black and Brown people.

Did people first come to this continent by land or by sea?

A top White House aide recounts her experiences that day.

The island was once a place of working-class ingenuity and Black daring.

A review of “West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire."

On the roads and seas miners traveled to reach gold in the United States and Australia.

Consolidation aimed to bring cutting-edge reforms to rural schools. Instead, it hurt kids and communities.

The fallout of the January 6th riot and its effect on D.C. statehood.

Pvt. Felix Hall’s killers were never brought to justice.

The ghosts of the uranium boom continue to haunt the land, water and people.

A Flourish data visualisation by Bill Black.

Take any major American city and you’re likely to find a historically Black neighborhood demolished, or cut off from the rest of the city by a highway.

The far-right protestors in Huntington Beach aren’t as novel as they seem.

In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back.

Historical traces of racism and exclusion remain on the island. It’s just that new residents can’t—or won’t—read them.

Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That's not an accident.

If we accept that we live in a desert nation, we can glean insights about how to live with aridity.

Some in The Settlement, founded by formerly enslaved people, say development should be allowed to create generational Black wealth while others disagree.

Lora Webb Nichols created and collected some twenty-four thousand negatives documenting life in her small town.

There are many black afterlives that are yet to be unearthed.

Pittsburgh as a symbol of America itself.

The fate of June Jordan’s visionary reimagining of Harlem shows that when it comes to Utopias, the key question is always: “Whose?”

Utopia Parkway, which slices through the most diverse borough in New York, began as a dream of cooperative housing for poor Jewish immigrants.

The 13-year old Cox confronted Jim Crow when she traveled to the nation's capital to compete in the 1936 National Spelling Bee.

The “border” is not a line on the ground, but a tool that enables violence and surveillance.

In the 1960s and 1970s, photographer Leni Sinclair stood at the center of a local scene where political and cultural ferment merged.

The fire of 1874 destroyed more than 80% of Black-owned property in Chicago. But Black people persisted and built vital cultural traditions and institutions.

After the discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former school for Native children in Canada, it is time to investigate similar abuses in the U.S.