Excerpts

A brief history of the Yuletide in America.

A comparison of the "Lost Cause" narratives from the Confederacy and Mexico's side of the Mexican-American War.

Mississippi may be the nation’s most religious state, but it is also far more complex and dynamic than many commentators admit.

Many Southern Baptists in the 1970s supported abortion rights and gender equality. What happened?

David Gunn’s murder was the first targeted killing of an abortion doctor in America. His killer now has an opportunity for parole.

Trump spends so much time defending statues not because he cares about history, but precisely because he doesn’t

When LL Cool J sat for his portrait, he found common ground with the life-long philanthropical endeavors of John D. Rockefeller.

The 1993 song reinvigorated the rap legend’s career — and against all odds became a Hollywood (and police) favorite

Morton and his skull measurements have long been part of the scholarship on American racism, but what happens when we draw Audubon into the racial drama?

The project's editor falsifies the history of American history-writing, openly embracing the privileging of “narrative” over “actual fact.”

Photos reveal how people structured their living rooms before the television became widespread.

With its doctrine of fairness, A Theory of Justice transformed political philosophy. But what did it leave out? 

The history of anti-racial justice rhetoric.

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.

Decades before Thoreau's famous experiment, a community of formerly enslaved men and women had a much different experience of life in the woods.

Learning the right lessons of the past.

All roads lead to Larry Hammond, Justice Lewis Powell’s law clerk at the time.

The child of someone once considered a piece of property instead of a human being, Daniel Smith is a flesh-and-blood reminder that slavery wasn't that long ago

An interview with Sean Wilentz on Library of America's new collection of Richard Hofstadter's works.

How James Baldwin confronted America's most exceptional lie.

Led by A. Philip Randolph, Black Pullman porters secured dignity on the job — and laid the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Cornell University's past and current wealth is tied to the dispossession of Indigenous groups from their land.

The story of Indigenous women’s participation in the struggle for women’s suffrage is highly complex, and Zitkala-Ša’s story provides an illuminating example.

How a satirical song mocking uneducated Confederates came to be embraced as an anthem of white Southern pride.

Why are politics so consumed with the past?

The process varied by state, with some making accommodations for the new voting bloc and others creating additional obstacles.

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

We looked at 271 presidential candidate logos from 1968–2020 to find out how race and gender intersect with color choices.

The House approved a constitutional amendment to dismantle the indirect voting system, but it was killed in the Senate by a filibuster.

Peter L'Official on the Mythologies Behind Urban Renewal.

The debate between historians and economists over the definition of capitalism, and the legacy of slavery in the structure of today's economy.

Museum visitors, as well as scholars of art, history, and African and Native American studies, discuss the sculpture’s intended and perceived meanings.

Who tells our stories has always mattered.

“This is not just history about Black Americans. This is American history. Slavery is American history. And we want people to understand that.”

A new collection of essays demonstrates how the civil rights icon’s thinking evolved amid the upheavals of the 20th century.

The media must make the long years of organizing as visible as the eruptions and uprisings.

Exploring freedpeople’s struggle against police brutality during Reconstruction.

As we mine the 1940s for alternate visions of international order, we must not presume that the US remains the benevolent center of global politics.

A pair of new books about US Marshal Wyatt Earp are now out. Only one of them shoots straight.

An accomplice of Emmett Till's killers murdered a Black man in a neighboring town, and there were parallels in the trials.

At the height of his powers, the Black Nationalist leader was assassinated, and the government botched the investigation of his murder.

A lethal incident of police brutality in Miami in 1979 offers just one of countless examples of the reality generations of African Americans have faced.

Here’s how the distribution of genres has changed since 1945 up to present.

Debating a modern parable about waste and technology.

A geologist and cartographer dreamed up a captivating, colorful, visually succinct way of representing the river's fluctuations through space and time.

When most people hear the word “punk,” they think of drug addled, nasty behavior. The truth is, it was driven by a visceral hatred for the president.

Fidel Castro's visit to Harlem at the intersection of two themes that shaped the 1960s: the Black freedom struggle and global protest during the Cold War.

Eugene Debs’s unswerving commitment to democracy and internationalism was born out of his revulsion at the tyranny of industrial capitalism.

In 1949, truncheon-wielding police officers descended on the racially integrated concert of singer Paul Robeson.

Descendants of the Pilgrims have highlighted their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.