Excerpts

Philadelphia gave America its flag, along with other enduring icons of nationhood. But for many, the red, white and blue banner embodies a legacy of injustice.

Finding struggle and resilience on a road trip through the birthplace of the blues.

It's impossible for most black Americans to construct full family trees, but genetic testing can provide some clues.

All good storytellers tell a big story within a little story, and so do all good historians.

A first-person account of Fidel Castro during a monumental moment in history.

"It didn’t make much sense for us to be talking about justice in the classroom if we weren’t willing to get in the struggle in the streets."

The city is at a crossroads. Which path will it take?

The right to abortion is an affirmation that women and girls have the right to control their own destiny.

No woman should have to go through what I went through, and no woman should have to overcome barriers to obtain a safe abortion.

Ashley D. Farmer and Tanisha C. Ford explain the importance of biographical writing of African American women and the personal connection involved.

Minnie Bruce Pratt shares her own story as a lesbian within the South, and the activism that occurred and the activism still ongoing.

Confessions of an FBI special agent.

Early in the Cuban Revolution, my mother made a consequential decision.

At one of Boston’s historical burial grounds, more than 1,000 Black Bostonians were laid to rest in unmarked graves. Their legacy continues to haunt us today.

The history of pimento cheese as a working class fixture and a symbol of Southern culture as seen through mystery novels.

My mother’s desk connected me with our shared heritage.

What my father saw in Mississippi.

To take away the right to privacy is to take a giant step backward in American history.

I live in a place where the wind blows history into my path.

At the heart of my family tree are only questions and mysteries.

My policy was to work for the best, while expanding NATO to prepare for the worst.

Many of the Communists who felt destined for a life of radicalism experienced their lives as irradiated by a kind of expressiveness that made them feel centered.

These things happen, in all our Harlems, every single day. If we ignore this fact, and our common responsibility to change this fact, we are sealing our doom.

Family paintings led me to a revolutionary society my mother’s grandfather was a member of and whose story was interwoven with Eastern European Jews.

Japanese Americans enter the frame of everyday Midwestern lives.

When Executive Order 9066 forcibly removed my family from their community 80 years ago, we lost more than I realized.

The revolutionary may have tried to find my grandfather by raiding a New Mexico village—but a friend’s camera truly captured our family patriarch.

The daughter and granddaughter of a former internee return to the notorious WWI-era detention site for Japanese-Americans.

'Did slavery make home always somewhere else?'

There are always three violences. The first is the violence itself.

Once derided as cesspools of Reagan-era consumerist excess, the shopping mall somehow became an unlikely sort-of quasi-public space that is now disappearing.

State leaders went to great lengths to instill their gauzy version of the Lost Cause in young minds.

Today, some Virginians would ‘protect’ children from the kind of valuable education that I had when my dad was governor.

Historian Melanie Newport turns to eBay.

My ancestors were enslaved—but their freedom came at a price for others.

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

As a biographer, Jacqueline Jones found herself wondering how she should deal with aspects of her subject’s life that left her baffled, even mystified.

In 2011, a grassroots anticapitalist movement galvanized people with its slogan “We are the 99 percent.” It changed me, and others, but did it change the world?

Former occupiers are working to transform the system from inside and out.

A top White House aide recounts her experiences that day.

My questions about my grandmother's death – from a self-induced abortion – haven’t changed since I was 12. What feels new is the urgency of her story.

I spent 600 hours listening in on the people who now run Afghanistan. It wasn’t until the end of my tour that I understood what they were telling me.

Sarah Chayes describes her experiences in Afghanistan and who's to blame for the problems today.

If your entire collection is on a streaming service, good luck accessing it in 10 or 20 years.

Revisiting America's first witch hunt — and discovering how much of it was a family affair. My family, that is.

How racial hierarchies are embedded within the archival standards and practices that legitimize historical memory.

He helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

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.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on how her mother overcame voter suppression and became an activist in her community.

After inheriting a box of documents from her grandfather, Marta Olmos learns more about her family's history.