Excerpts

On the origins, use, and abuse of mugshots.

The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to imagine our shared lives without it.

A brief history on land ownership, valuation and development in the City of Richmond and the maps used to destroy black communities.

Before presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, before Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, there was Congresswoman and firebrand Bella Abzug.

A century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach.

This isn’t the first time a House committee has investigated political violence in the Capitol.

When medicine and journalism defeated cholera.

The Texas Rangers were vicious enforcers of white power. J.T. Canales, who once fought against them lost, but the reckoning he sought is finally underway.

George III was a model monarch, whose reputation finally deserves rehabilitation a quarter of a millennium later.

The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading.

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over.

Distributing them equally is key to defeating the coronavirus.

Tens of thousands of Indigenous people labored in bondage across the western United States in the 1800s.

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.