People working in fields, figures in an account book, and a copy of the Guardian newspaper.

Guardian Owner Apologises for Founders’ Links to Transatlantic Slavery

Scott Trust to invest in decade-long programme of restorative justice after academic research into newspaper’s origins.
AR-15

Varmints, Soldiers and Looming Threats: See the Ads Used to Sell the AR-15

Through six decades, gunmakers and advertisers leveraged social and cultural changes to broaden the AR-15′s appeal.
Yoshitaka Watanabe family photo: from left Yoshitaka Watanabe, Toshiko, Masao, Kimiko, Tabo, Shigeo, Shizue Watanabe.

No, My Japanese American Parents Were Not 'Interned' During WWII. They Were Incarcerated.

The Los Angeles Times will no longer use "internment" to describe the mass incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
Elsie Robinson

'Listen, World!': The Story of America's Most-Read Woman, Elsie Robinson

She risked everything to escape a life of poverty and become one of the nation's most read columnists, while advocating for the advancement of women.
Daniel Ellsberg at a press conference in New York City, 1972.

My Fifty Years with Dan Ellsberg

The man who changed America.
J. Edgar Hoover and two other men pose with guns.

The Cult of J. Edgar Hoover

A zealot through and through, he ran the FBI like a religious sect.
Marihuana revenue stamp $1 1937

1910s Cannabis Discourse and Prohibition

Does marijuana prohibition have racist origins? Where did ideas of “reefer madness” come from? This project looks to the historical record for answers.
Fox News studios in New York in 2018.
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Fox News’s Handling of Election Lies Was Extreme but Far From Unusual

News organizations air lies from political figures more often than you’d think, but for very different reasons than Fox News.
Illustration of the word Facism, divided by various speach bubbles.

Does American Fascism Exist?

For nearly a century, Americans have been throwing the term around—without agreeing what that means.
Zoe Anderson Norris.

Meet Zoe Anderson Norris, the "Nellie Bly You've Never Heard Of"

Norris, who dubbed herself the "Queen of Bohemia," exposed the injustices of post-Gilded Age New York City—by going undercover.
Some pumpkins.

Ain't I Some Pumpkins?

Soon after he was elected, Abraham Lincoln received a rather bizarre letter.
Comic strip: Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos: "Jon Smythe has escaped being lynched by Green Men but is captured by the "Dark Mystery!".

Jay Jackson’s Audacious Comics

Written during World War II, Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos imagined a future liberated from racism and inequality.
The old New York Times building in 2006.

The New York Times is Repeating One of Its Most Notorious Mistakes

The paper’s anti-trans coverage parallels its failings over gay rights and AIDS. But the Times appears determined not to learn from its own history.
Print of Noah Webster and his dictionary by Root & Tinker, 1886.
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The Case For Calling the Language "American"

This demonym will allow other Englishers to be recognized for their own locales.
Black man standing beside barbecue stand, Pittsburgh 1933.

Pittsburgh Reformers and the Black Freedom Struggle

Historian Adam Lee Cilli effectively illustrates the centrality of Black Pittsburgh within the larger Black Freedom Struggle.
A photograph of James Eads How superimposed over a photograph of vagrant workers at a train station.

St. Louis' Wealthy "King of the Hobos"

Labeled a local eccentric, millionaire James Eads How used his inherited wealth to support vagrant communities.
A photograph of Marvel Cooke overlayed over The Crisis' newspaper office.

This Radical Reporter Dedicated Her Life to Fighting the System

"I idolized women like Marvel Cooke," Angela Davis tells Teen Vogue.
Cast members of the television show "Sesame Street" circa 1969, pose on the set with some of the puppet characters. From left: Will Lee, Matt Robinson, Bob McGrath and Loretta Long, along with Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover, Ernie, Bert and Oscar the Grouch. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Mississippi Banned ‘Sesame Street’ for Showing Black and White Kids Playing

In 1970, an all-white state commission thought Mississippi was "not yet ready" to see a racially integration depicted on television. The backlash was swift.
Alien Invasion, 1492, by Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, depicting animals with harsh lines and the word "un-erasing."

How Wikipedia Distorts Indigenous History

Native editors are fighting back.
Graph drawn by W.E.B. Du Bois displaying the income and expenditure of Black American families in Atlanta.

How W.E.B. Du Bois Disrupted America’s Dominance at the World’s Fair

With bar graphs and pie charts, the sociologist and his Atlanta students demonstrated Black excellence in the face of widespread discrimination.
Benjamin Franklin, circa 1785.

AI Chatbot Mimics Anyone in History — But Gets a Lot Wrong, Experts Say

A chatbot billed as an educational tool falsely portrays historical figures, including dictators and Nazis, as apologetic for their crimes.
A phot taken by Corkey Lee of an Asian woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty in front of a diamond store with a Statue of Liberty mural.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.
Sketch of a newspaper office with men holding stacks of papers.
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The Feud Between Immigrant Newspapers in Arkansas

A feud between two nineteenth-century German-language newspapers showed that immigrant communities embraced a diversity of interests and beliefs.
Brazilla Carroll Reece, Joseph McCarthy and Harry S. Truman with democratic donkeys in word bubbles.

The Real Origins of the “Democrat Party” Troll

We can’t blame Joe McCarthy for this one. (Though he was a fan.)
Ink prints of men fighting each other.
partner

After Attica, the McKay Report in the Prison Press

How was the famous prisoner uprising and its aftermath depicted in the prison press? The American Prison Newspapers collection on JSTOR has answers.
Cover of Ms. Magazine titled "Rage + Women = Power"

Ms. Magazine Turns 50

Looking back at half a century of truth-telling and rebelling.
Abandoned and burned-out buildings in the East Village in 1986.

Edifice Complex

Restoring the term “burnout” to its roots in landlord arson puts the dispossession of poor city dwellers at its center.
Douglas R. Stringfellow reading a statement before the press.

The Congressman Who ‘Embellished’ His Résumé Long Before George Santos

In the 1950's, Rep. Douglas Stringfellow was a promising young congressman with an incredible World War II story. Then the truth came out.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky at a 2022 CDC Briefing.

The Year the Pandemic "Ended" (Part 1)

The following piece presents an incomplete timeline of the sociological production of the end of the pandemic over the last year.
Frank Shakespeare in 1968.

Frank Shakespeare, Nixon TV Guru Who Redefined Political Ads, Dies At 97

Mr. Shakespeare's team oversaw ads and on-air events that reflected the rising power of television as a political tool.