A Kansas City Chiefs fan in a headdress.

How the Kansas City Chiefs Got Their Name and the Boy Scout Tribe of Mic-O-Say

The Mic-O-Say was founded in 1925, under the leadership of Harold Roe Bartle, a two-term Kansas City mayor known in his social circles as ‘Chief.’

Walking with the Ghosts of Black Los Angeles

"You can't disentangle blackness and California."
Mill building on a bustling street in Cincinnatti in 1851.

The Forgotten Urbanists of 19th-Century Boomtowns

Why some journalists amassed reams of data and published thousands of pages to promote their home cities.

The Secret History of Fort Detrick, the CIA’s Base for Mind Control Experiments

Today, it’s a cutting-edge lab. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the center of the U.S. government’s darkest experiments.
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How the Kikotan Massacre Prepared the Ground for the Arrival of the First Africans in 1619

America was built by the labor of stolen African bodies, on stolen Native American lands.
Cell block at Riker's Island

Is It Possible for New York City to Get Jail Design Right?

Rikers Island jails were supposed to be the more humane model when they were built. New York City has the same lofty goals as it plans Rikers’ replacements.
A map of the Kingdom of the Happy Land.

A Black Kingdom in Postbellum Appalachia

The Kingdom of the Happy Land represents just one of many Black placemaking efforts in Appalachia. We must not forget it.
Sunrise over Sapelo Island, Georgia.

Before 1619, There Was 1526: The Mystery of the First Enslaved Africans in What Became the United States

Nearly one hundred years before enslaved African arrived in Jamestown, the Spanish brought 100 slaves to the coast of what is now Georgia or South Carolina.
Crowd gathered around statue for Stonewall Jackson memorial dedication, Charlottesville, 1921.

UVA and the History of Race: The Lost Cause Through Judge Duke’s Eyes

A profile of UVA graduate R.T.W. Duke Jr., who presided over the 1924 dedication of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville.

Goodbye to Good Earth

A Louisiana tribe’s long fight against the American tide.

Reflections on a Silent Soldier

After the television cameras went away, a North Carolina city debated the future of its toppled Confederate statue.

The History of Cities Is About How We Get to Work

From ancient Rome to modern Atlanta, the technologies that allow people to commute in about 30 minutes have defined the shape of cities.

Mike's Big Ditch

The failed canal project that could have saved cities like Youngstown, Ohio.

Working Off the Past, from Atlanta to Berlin

A Jewish American reflects on a life spent amidst the ghosts of the American South and the former capital of the Reich.

California’s Forgotten Confederate History

Why was the Golden State once chock-full of memorials to the Southern rebels?
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The Civil War and the Black West

On the integrated Union regiments composed of white, black, and native men who fought in the Civil War's western theatre.
Japanese-Americans farming in Manzanar
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A Grave Injustice

Ed Ayers visits Manzanar, the largest of the WWII-era internment camps for Japanese Americans, and speaks to those keeping the memories of detainees alive.
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Lines in the Sand

Ed Ayers visits with public historians in Texas and explores what's wrong with remembering the Alamo as the beginning of Texas history.
Totem poles near houses

‘Proud Raven, Panting Wolf’ — A History of Totem Poles in Alaska

A New Deal program to restore Totem Poles in Alaska provided jobs and boosted tourism, but it ignored their history and significance within Native culture.
Workers exit a Koch Foods Inc., plant in Morton, Mississippi, during an ICE raid.
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The Poultry Industry Recruited Them. Now ICE Raids Are Devastating Their Communities.

How immigrants established vibrant communities in the rural South over a quarter-century.
People mourning the Triangle Shirtwaist Women
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The Fire of a Movement

Ed Ayers visits the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and learns how public outcry inspired safety laws that revolutionized industrial work nationwide.
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Freedom's Fortress

Exploring Virginia’s Fort Monroe – the place where slavery began in British North America, and where, during the Civil War, it began to unravel.

Unearthing the Complex Histories of Madison Parks

Creating the city's bucolic, natural landscapes required a good deal of displacement, technological intervention, and erasure.
Modern building on a grassy lawn

This Small Indiana Town is a Hotbed of Utopianism

New Harmony has attracted eccentric spiritual groups, social reformers, intellectuals, and artists.
Open field by a highway.

The Departed and Dismissed of Richmond

Richmond has a long-forgotten graveyard that is the resting place for hundreds of slaves. Will a new railway be built over it?

Emmett Till Memory Project

The website version of an app designed to be a digital guide to the legacy of Till’s murder.

The Man Who Tried to Claim the Grand Canyon

Ralph H. Cameron staked mining claims around the Grand Canyon, seeking to privatize it. To protect his claims, he ran for Senate.
View over Baltimore.
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How Politicians Use Fear of Cities Like Baltimore to Stoke White Resentment

President Trump is building on a tactic pioneered by segregationists.

Synecdoche, Illinois

A history of how Peoria became a stand-in for the country surrounding it.
Black men confront armed whites in a Chicago street.

‘Ready To Explode’

How a black teen’s drifting raft triggered a deadly week of riots 100 years ago in Chicago.