Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk
Black family outside their homestead, Nicodemus, Graham County, Kansas.

Exodusters

Migration further west began almost immediately after Reconstruction ended, as Black Americans initiated the "Great Exodus" outside the South toward Kansas.
Bob Dylan.

Legacy of a Lonesome Death

Had Bob Dylan not written a song about it, the 1963 killing of a black servant by a white socialite’s cane might have been long forgotten.
Pat Tillman memorial with American flags.

The NFL, the Military, and the Hijacking of Pat Tillman’s Story

Pat Tillman’s life and death is an all-American story. It’s just not the kind that Donald Trump and his supporters want it to be.
Angela Davis attending her first news conference after being released on bail, February 24, 1972.

Angela Davis Exposed the Injustice at the Heart of the Criminal Justice System

In 1970, Angela Davis was arrested on suspicion of murder. The trial — and her eventual victory — proved to everyone that the justice system was corrupt.
Collage of Supreme Court and 14th amendment-related images.

Reversing the Legacy of Slaughter-House

A careful examination of the Privileges or Immunities Clause shows what we lost 150 years ago.
Graph of tax rates on top marginal earned income vs. long term capital gains, 1918-2020.

Why Is Wealth White?

In the 20th century, a moral economy of “whites-only” wealth animated federal policies and programs that created the propertied white middle class.
The North American Trust Company building in Havana, Cuba.

The Imperial Fed

Colonial currencies and the pan-American origins of the dollar system.
Fake 1000 dollar bill.
partner

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

The story of America's oldest counterfeiters and why the Civil War spurred the Secret Service into hunting them down.
New York City (New York, USA), Brooklyn Bridge.
partner

Over Troubled Waters

Looking for an easy buck, con artists in the early 1900s infamously "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge to immigrants fresh off the boat.
Album with Che Guevara's hair, fingerprints, and photos of his body.

The Death of Che Guevara Declassified

A CIA memo shows that US officials considered his execution a crucial victory—but they were mistaken in believing Che’s ideas could be buried along with his body.
Washington D.C. in 1860.

Draining the Swamp

Washington may be the only city on Earth that lobbied itself into existence.
A Black soldier of the 12th Armored Division stands guard over a group of Nazi prisoners captured in the surrounding German forest, April 1945.
partner

Prisoners Like Us: German POW and Black American Solidarity

During World War II, almost a half million POWs were interned in the United States, where they forged sympathetic relationships with Black American soldiers.
Rows of Klansmen in white hoods with faces exposed march on Washington; the dome of the Capitol is visible in the background.

When the Klan Ruled Indiana… And Had Plans to Spread Its Empire of Hate Across America

The Klan dens of the heartland were powerful, vicious, and ambitious. Indiana was their bastion.
Willie Nelson at the 1973 Fourth of July Picnic, in Dripping Springs.

That ’70s Show

Forty years ago, Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff, and a whole host of Texas misfits brought the hippies and rednecks together in outlaw country.
Boston Herald assistant publisher W.G. Gavin at the “Rumor Clinic,” 1942.

During WWII, 'Rumor Clinics' Were Set Up to Dispel Morale-Damaging Gossip

A network of "morale wardens" tracked down the latest scuttlebutt.
Caricature of Mark Twain wearing a barrel with smoke from his pipe making a dollar sign.

Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes

“I am frightened by the proportions of my prosperity,” Twain said. “It seems to me that whatever I touch turns to gold.”
Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

Staten Island, Forgotten Borough

Staten Island gets a lot of disrespect from other New Yorkers, some of it fair. But it has its own fascinating people’s history.
Three demonstrators hold proabortion signs outside the federal courthouse in Amarillo, Tex. (David Erickson/AP)
partner

Abortion Pill Decision Reveals How the Debate Has Changed Since Dobbs

The medication abortion decision by a federal judge in Texas focused on the rights of fetuses and the interests of doctors — not the rights of women.
Abandoned Howard Johnson's restaurant overgrown with vegetation.

Howard Johnson’s, Host of the Bygone Ways

For more than seven decades American roads were dotted with the familiar orange roof and blue cupola of the ubiquitous Howard Johnson’s restaurants and Motor Lodges.
Poet-playwright and political activist Imamu Amiri Baraka recites his poem, "Its Nation Time," at the National Black Political Convention.
partner

The Black Political Convention

Black Journal interviews with Imamu Amiri Baraka, poet-playwright and co-chairman of the National Black Political Convention.
Kanye West rapping.

Kanye and the Troubling History of Persistent Antisemitism

Past and present celebrities influence on the maintaining of antisemitism.
A portrait of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, nicknamed "Old Bacon Face," painted by John Beale Bordley in 1836.

Can a Supreme Court Justice Be Impeached? Meet ‘Old Bacon Face.’

Samuel Chase was the only Supreme Court justice to be impeached, after he openly campaigned for a president and told jurors who he thought was guilty.
American Indian woman embraces a horse wearing a ceremonial mask.

Taken Together, Archaeology, Genomics and Indigenous Knowledge Revise Colonial Human-Horse Stories

New research adds scientific detail to Indigenous narratives that tell a different story.
Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King.

The Night James Brown Saved Boston

The city might have gone up in flames after MLK's assassination, if not for the quick actions of a DJ, a city councilor, and The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.
Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon.
partner

There Is a Precedent for Trump’s Indictment: Spiro Agnew

Spiro Agnew was the progenitor of Trump’s politics. He also resigned from office and accepted a plea deal to avoid jail time.
This photo, taken on the Minnesota frontier, depicts Regina Sorenson and three others "dressed in men's suits." MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Forgotten Trans History of the Wild West

Despite a seeming absence from the historical record, people who did not conform to traditional gender norms were a part of daily life in the Old West.
Six-panel illustration of debtors' prisons.

I.O.U.

What replaced imprisonment for debt was something that has become a mainstay of American life: bankruptcy.
Joe Buck and Rizzo walking on a bridge.

How John Schlesinger’s Homeless and Lonesome ‘Midnight Cowboy’ Rode His Way to the Top

It became the first and only X-rated movie to win a best picture Oscar.
Identification documents and photo of Hans Speier on the cover of "Democracy in Exile."

Killing Democracy to Save It

How an idealistic defense intellectual concluded that democracy is often its own worst enemy.
Reagan at a podium.

Winging It: The Battle Between Reagan and PATCO

The true economic legacy of the Reagan years is not tax cuts but union busting.
Erick Cedeño on a bicycle and map of a route through the west.

Following the Black Soldiers who Biked Across America

Bikepacking historian Erick Cedeño retraces the Buffalo soldiers' legendary journey from Montana to Missouri to rethink it and its place in American history.
Harrison Gray Otis in superimposed over newspapers and palm trees.

Letter from Los Angeles

The history of the L.A. Times.
Painting of "The County Election" by George Caleb Bingham.

The Myth of American Individualism

How the utopian notion of the U.S. as a meritocracy became so ingrained in the American psyche.
Drawing of five women in uniform aprons and white bonnets.

Law, Medicine, Women’s Authority, and the History of Troubled Births

A new book "examines legal cases of women accused of infanticide and concealment of stillbirth."
Venable Mound, Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, built ca. 700–1200 CE.

Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth

For thousands of years, Indigenous societies were building hundred-foot pyramids along the Mississippi River.
Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson locking hands.

Tennessee

The state GOP's expulsion of legislators Justin Pearson and Justin Jones echoes Georgia's refusal to seat congressman Julian Bond in 1965 for opposing the Vietnam War.
Map of Brooklyn, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri, 1905.

We Call It Freedom Village: Brooklyn, Illinois’s Radical Tactics of Black Place-Making

A look into the largely unexplored history of black town-building.
Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley delivering the welcoming address to delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, on Aug. 26, 1968. BETTMANN ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES

How Chicago Got Its Gun Laws

It’s nearly impossible to separate modern-day gun laws from race.
Enslaved men gathered in the woods to plot a revolt.

Slavery and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century New Jersey

While documented revolts of enslaved persons in New Jersey aren’t abundant, some examples speak to the spirit of resistance among African people held captive.
Life Magazine Cover, August 25th 1967, featuring a U.S. Marine and an Injured Child in Vietnam.

Life Goes to Vietnam

Debunking claims that news media fueled public disillusionment and cost the US victory.

Fountain Society

The humble drinking fountain can tell us much about a society’s attitudes towards health, hygiene, equity, virtue, public goods and civic responsibilities.
Postcard of Sarajevo.

Collapsing Pluralism: The Bosnian War Three Decades Later

The US is not Yugoslavia, but its struggles surrounding pluralism, nationalism, and an urban/rural divide parallel those Yugoslavia faced as it descended into chaos.
Network visualized as a colorful web.

Visualizing Women in Science

A new interactive digital project recovers biographies of women in science, and recreates the social networks that were essential to sustaining their work.
Donellia Chives, a trustee of Penn Center.

White Gold from Black Hands: The Gullah Geechee Fight for a Legacy after Slavery

Descendants of the west Africans who picked the cotton that made Manchester rich are struggling to keep their distinct culture alive.
A soldier standing guard on the corner of 7th & N Street NW in Washington D.C. with the ruins of buildings that were destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
partner

After April 4: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Work of Civil Rights in DC

When the smoke cleared in D.C. following the 1968 riots after the assasination of MLK, the city's black communities organized to rebuild a more equitable city.
Inez Milholland with her dog.

Let Us Mate

Proposal advice from Inez Milholland, originally published in the Chicago Day Book, 1916.
Image of a Black man wearing a black mask saying "I Can't Breathe"

A History of Anti-Black Racism In Medicine

This syllabus lays groundwork for making questions of race and racism central to studying the histories of medicine and science.
Protesters outside the Supreme Court on December 5, when oral arguments were heard in 303 Creative LLC v. Eleni.

The New Faith-Based Discrimination

A sharp uptick in challenges to U.S. antidiscrimination laws threatens decades of progress in extending civil rights to all.
Sam Yudin of the Jewish American Military Historical Society, left, and Joseph Golden of Temple Beth El in Beckley, W.Va., unveil a sign Monday near Fayetteville marking the 1862 Passover Seder by Union soldiers.

Jewish Soldiers Held a Makeshift Seder in the Middle of the Civil War

Union soldiers improvised a Passover celebration near what's now Fayetteville, W.Va. They're being honored with a sign at the approximate site.
Richard Nixon discusses Vietnam with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Deputy National Security Advisor Al Haig at Camp David, 1972.
partner

The "Madman Theory" Was Quintessential Nixon

The rash ruse was central to Nixon’s strategy to fight the Cold War, and can also tell us a good deal about the famously elusive ex-president himself.
Filter by:

Categories

Select content type

Time