Excerpts

"A lot has been hidden from Black Americans. And so there is always a longing to know who you are and where you come from.”

Five months before his assassination in 1978, Harvey Milk called on the president of the United States to defend the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.

The Weisman family objected to religious prayers at a 1986 school graduation. The case went to the Supreme Court, which is again ruling on prayer in schools.

How a 37-word clause tucked inside a new education legislation reshape women’s sports forever.

The Julian Assange case exposes how changing concepts unintentionally broadened a law.

In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.

As the deadline to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment lapsed in June 1982, the amendment's foes celebrated, while its proponents looked to the future.

These communities rely almost entirely on tourism for their existence—yet too much tourism, not to mention climate change, can destroy them.

Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Congress enacted several laws restricting the sale of alcohol to Native Americans.

“The schoolhouse door cannot be closed to one of modern society’s most marginalized, most vilified groups.”

Bohemian Greenwich Village and the secret club that sparked modern feminism.

Black generosity has always been vital to the freedom struggle.

Before Juneteenth became an official federal holiday, 94-year-old Opal Lee was on a mission.

The rights and responsibilities of 17th-century fatherhood in England's North American colonies.

The holiday’s lack of history allowed activists to give it meaning after America’s divorce laws changed.

The controversy between players and owners frequently brought baseball into the federal courts between the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries.

In his comprehensive study of the national anthem, a historian and musicologist examines our complicated relationship to a famously challenging song.

As the gunmakers’ markets matured through the Civil War era, some began mastering the art of product promotion, following the lead set by Samuel Colt.

When horses gallop, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at once? This episode of The Disappearing Spoon recounts the saga that led to the answer.

Scripted from front-page news, the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper plays were part entertainment, part protest, and entirely educational.

Pachappa Camp, the first Korean-organized immigrant settlement in the United States, was established through the efforts of Ahn Chang Ho.

Stephanie Hall provides examples of folklore and storytelling within a fathers' relationship to music.

Ralph LaRossa explains the problems with mythologizing modern dads and the stereotypes present within views of fatherhood of the past.

From MLK to Obama, advancers for civil rights were driven by their fatherhood and dreams of better life for their own children.

Tufts Professor Kris Manjapra examines the history of the injustice of abolition in the U.S. and abroad and the need for reparations in his new book.

"I think the key change for the invention of the modern father is in the 1920s," says historian Robert L. Griswold.

Before she met John Lennon, she was a significant figure in avant-garde circles and had created masterpieces. Did celebrity deprive her of her due as an artist?

Why vigilante violence appeals politically.

Herblock, Garry Trudeau, and others created memorable cartoons that skewered Nixon and Watergate, making the era a boom time for political satire.

Can the origins of American religious freedom be traced to the religious and political history of England and its empire?

Find out how one woman asked to recognize the fathers in her town and inspired others.

As an NRA-approved icon and the mass shooter’s weapon of choice, the AR-15 has done untold harm.

Southern secessionists in 1860 had similar arguments to those of the rioters who stormed the Capitol.

A century ago, Arlington was home to one of the most powerful radio stations in history, which helped to usher in an era of wireless communications.

In the twentieth century, the mollusk-produced gem was a must have for members of WASP gentility. In the twenty-first century, its appeal is far more inclusive.

In Hell Creek, Montana, with a lot of dynamite.

As Frederick Douglass’s master put it, a slave who learned to read and write against the will of his master was tantamount to “running away with himself.”

Time to blow the final whistle on the oppression Olympics.

How American landscape painters, seen as old-fashioned and provincial, gained cultural power by glorifying expansionism.

An interview with Woody Holton on his new book, "Liberty is Sweet."

Snobbish elitism will hurt their cause.

Poor children don't struggle in school because of their parents. They struggle because of poverty.

In certain corners of the internet, you can actually buy money, but these bills are relics of the Free Banking Era that reigned from the 1830s to the 1860s.

Alternative currencies flourish in desperate times and situations.

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

As the Cherokee Nation’s first female chief’s image is minted onto a coin, her full humanity should be examined.

Resiliency and the ability to develop coping mechanisms may define our times.

Elites understood that a unified left spelled doom for their economic advantages.

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.

College student essays from 1961 underscore why our current trajectory could be devastating.