Excerpts

Historical photographs of early Juneteenth celebrations throughout its home state of Texas and across the country.

The holiday is a reminder of the Civil War's larger meaning, the unfulfilled promise of Reconstruction, and the reinforcement of democratic values.

When the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith ran for president, he wasn’t seeking further glory but a policy change in religious liberty.

1619, 1776, and the politics of the past.

Amid all the imperial aspiration, wooly-minded New Age mythologizing, and pure unadulterated commerce, the obelisk stands tall.

Victoria Dailey looks back at Oscar Wilde’s wild ride through the United States in the early 1880s.

Cold War modernists of the title do not seem to be the painters, sculptors, poets, and novelists who produced the original works.

Efforts to combat narcotics and communism militarized the country's security forces.

Local legacy-keepers are working to ensure that the histories aren't lost or forgotten.

In the Texas legislature, Republicans seemed willing to acknowledge systemic racism but resistant to the idea of talking about it with children.

The author of “The Engagement" discusses the activists, politicians, and judicial figures who were at the forefront of the battle over same-sex marriage.

As a teen-ager, Joe Conzo, Jr., took intimate pictures of the Bronx music scene. He’s lived several lives in the time since.

The decades after the Civil War saw mass participation and mass outrage, followed by a period of orderly reform. What can we learn from that era today?

By limiting discussion of the infamous Supreme Court decision, law-school professors risk minimizing the role of racism in American history.

Though the cruelties of the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy were unique, they were part of an American tradition of taking children from parents.

A historian on the unavoidable discomfort around anti-racist education.

While smallpox was ravaging late 18th century Britain, John Haygarth thought up of a plan to pay people for public health compliance.

Some of the same Lexington townspeople who took up arms to fight for freedom on April 19, 1775, were slave owners. And one of them was enslaved.

Eric Hinderaker offers a masterclass in how to peel back the layers of data, scholarship, and propaganda to understand what we call the Boston Massacre.

Following backlash to the construction of a statue for Mary Seacole, Knight describes the connection between nursing and slavery in the US South.

The theory has not provided the clarity some of its early proponents had hoped it would.

John Marshall Harlan's relationship with an enslaved man who grew up in his home showed how respect could transcend barriers and point a path to freedom.

What the 1971 uprising and massacre reveal about our prison system and the liberal democratic state.

Pinball hasn’t always been an all-American game of fun: for decades it was an object of widespread moral outrage.

A recent biography reveals the many contradictions of the photographer who fastidiously documented postwar American life.

Lewis Hine captured the misery, dignity, and occasional bursts of solidarity within US working-class life in the early twentieth century.

Our foremothers wove spiritual beliefs, cultural values, and historical knowledge into their flax, wool, silk, and cotton webs.

The smallpox epidemic of the 1860s offers us a valuable, if disconcerting, clue about how epidemics actually end.

An account of the first female to serve in the U.S. Navy.

For too long, we've ignored our real history. We must face where truth can take us.

Old feuds remind us that history is continually revised, driven by new evidence and present-day imperatives.

A local gay rights activist launched a publicity stunt that became so much more. Congress couldn’t help but notice.

The memoirist is at the center of two new, very different books: a biography of D. H. Lawrence and a novel by Rachel Cusk. Has she been rescued or reduced?

How an evil sea captain and a beloved queen made the world crave KFC.

Why the Black Lives Matter movement might help shift the conversation about a conflict thousands of miles away.

The daughter of Buddy Holly's bandmate reflects on the defensiveness some white people have about the roots of rock 'n' roll.

In 1836, the House passed a resolution that automatically tabled all petitions on slavery without a hearing.

Business groups have always worked with both parties to support globalization and free trade.

After the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in 1945, Mochitsura Hashimoto, a Japanese sub commander, pushed to exonerate Navy Capt. Charles McVay.

We tend to think of "they," "Mx.," and "hir" as recent inventions. But English speakers have been looking for better ways to talk about gender for a long time.

Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.

Sixty years ago, the company modernized animation when it used Xerox technology on the classic film.

Soul City in North Carolina was designed to build Black wealth and address racial injustice. Then its opponents lined up.

When Tuskegee student Sammy Younge, Jr., was murdered in 1966, his classmates focused their righteous anger on a local monument.

Although he did not openly endorse every one of the many precepts of the antislavery Constitution, Lincoln framed his positions entirely within its parameters.

Why John Adams was peculiarly unsuited to the moment.

Whatever the “City on a Hill” is, the phrase was not discovered by Kennedy or Reagan.

In a new book, the often under-appreciated contribution that black soldiers made during the civil war is brought to light with a trove of unseen photos.

Consumer activists taking on the companies that support former President Donald Trump can learn from the boycott that never ended.

A new book says “the Internet was developed as a weapon and remains a weapon today.” Does the charge hold up?