Excerpts

Much of the world used to treat drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. And then America got its way.

The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments tried to remove the power of the states to impede key rights.

She was one half of a powerhouse academic couple and an influential historian in her own right. But she's still often overlooked.

How do we memorialize life online when it’s constantly disappearing?

Trump, Biden, and public lands.

Daryl Michael Scott on propaganda and myth from ‘The 1619 Project’ to Trumpism.

While focusing on refuting the Lost Cause narrative, many historians forget to memorialize Black Americans in the post Civil War period.

Reconciliation is good — but not at any cost.

Self-help guru Louise Hay’s “Hayrides” drew in thousands during the hopelessness and government neglect of the AIDS crisis.

A recent documentary reminds us of her family’s strength and our own weakness.

Whose body was harvested to create a spectacular anatomical specimen, and did that person know they would be on display more than a century later?

Swedberg's new book shows how prevalent concerns about mental illness were to the people of the early American republic.

Both parties play the redistricting game, redrawing electoral boundaries to lock down power.

The amendment didn't “give” women the right to vote. It wasn’t a gift; it was a hard-won victory achieved after more than seventy years of suffragist agitation.

On March 3, 1913, thousands of women gathered in Washington D.C. for the Women's Suffrage Parade -- the first mass protest for a woman's right to vote.

While they advanced African American rights, they had serious flaws, Eric Foner writes.

Racial covenants and housing discrimination in 20th century Minneapolis.

Some cities are trying to help poor children succeed by having their families move to middle-income, "opportunity areas" -- an idea once politically impossible.

Has the government done enough to stop housing discrimination?

The restrictions imposed during recent racial justice protests have their roots in efforts to “contain” Black Americans. 

A new exhibit at the Detroit Public Library, displays old images of the historic African American neighborhood in its final days.

Images of decaying daguerreotypes whose photographic fixing was subject to decay like the people they captured.

For Freud, “chosenness” was a psychopathological fantasy in need of explanation.

Six decades ago, Gordon Parks, Life magazine’s first black photographer, revolutionized what a crime photo could look like.

Democrats’ policies aim to address societal problems to make fascism and socialism less attractive.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.

The individualization of risk that we often think of as part of neoliberalism already existed strongly in the early 20th century.

The city will memorialize part of its darkest history at the refurnished Walnut Street Bridge.

One Texas Republican state House member wants to create a “patriotic” education project to celebrate the Lone Star State—and whitewash its ugly past.

New Jersey was known as the slave state of the North, and our early economy was built on unpaid labor.

At the first hint the virus was receding, people pushed to get life back to normal. Unfortunately another surge of the disease followed.

Was this new age spurred by the ideals of the Enlightenment or by the imperatives of global warfare?

A COVID memorial will have to commemorate shame and failure as well as grief and bravery.

Declassified documents show the State Department had ample forewarning that a coup was being plotted, and that human rights violations would be committed.

It's the health inequities of today, not the infamous "Tuskegee Study," that explain many Black people's distrust of the American health system.

She also acted as a muse to artist Man Ray, with whom she briefly led a relationship.

What's the matter with left-populism? A review of Thomas Frank's "The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism."

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee fought for the rights of women on two sides of the world.

Divisions in society and religion that still exist today resulted from the "Great Awakenings" of the 18th Century.

A web-based visualization platform for exploring the 170,000 photos taken by U.S. government agencies during the Great Depression.

The story of medical sterilization, which in many cases was disguised as a routine appendectomy surgery.

Oregon became ground zero of America’s racial reckoning protests last summer. But activists say it doesn’t know its own history.

An enslaved woman who jumped from a building in 1815 is later revealed to be the plaintiff in a successful lawsuit for her freedom.

A wrenching new book recounts the bloodiest prison battle in our history.

The $10 million initiative will provide housing and mortgage assistance to address discrimination.

The struggle for autonomy and representation has been full of gains followed by setbacks.

Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.

Understanding this history helps make the case for D.C. as the 51st state.

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted racial disparities with roots in the past.

On L.A. solidarity and the Black radical tradition.