Excerpts

It happens every year.

Although the British settlers imported Africans from the first as slaves, the earliest Virginians had yet to establish many basic rules regarding slavery.

In 1873, there weren’t very many options for the public in the United States to see what a real whale looked like.

The Constitution originally provided for the selection of senators by state legislatures, but the 17th Amendment changed that, and with it, the Senate itself.

Officials altered a photo of the 2017 Women’s March to avoid “political controversy.”

Starting in the 1970s, groups like MOVE and Seeds of Wisdom have fought for the decolonization of urban space.

Many of King’s words about allies ring true today.

Applying King to our contemporary moment.

The New York Times’ 1619 Project launched with the best of intentions, but has been undermined by some of its claims.

Benjamin Franklin even wrote an ode to a fallen one.

Influence, invention, and the legacy of Leon Redbone.

A pianist performs a piece of music forgotten for 150 years.

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that Imperial expansion over stolen Indian land shaped and deepened the American Revolution’s relationship to slavery.

Honoring Baker alongside Martin Luther King would highlight the long and patient work of building a social movement.

Textbooks can be revised, but historic sites, monuments, and collections that memorialize ugly pasts aren’t so easily changed.

A new book, "Franchise," explains how black franchise owners became the backbone of the industry.

As Eisenhower predicted, there is no balance left, as U.S. policy is reduced to who we threaten, bomb, or occupy next.

The return of the disease reflects historical amnesia, declining faith in institutions, and a lack of concern for the public good.

Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth of chaos theory. Their previously untold story illustrates the changing status of computation in science.

A documentary website that tells the story of how young activists united with local people in the Deep South to build a grassroots movement that transformed the nation.

It’s in vogue to call the new movement against police violence "leaderless." But as Ella Baker taught us, it's more correct to say that it has many leaders.

Revolution, the civil rights movement, and African-American identity.

A public historian recommends tactics for explaining an oft-left out period.

At Boston Latin School teachers are changing the way they prepare their students to think critically about immigration policy.

The mob saw an opportunity. Local 338 had other ideas.

What to the historian is 1619? What to Africans and their descendants is 1619?

A study of more than 100 cities shows neighborhoods subjected to discriminatory housing policies nearly a century ago are hotter today than other areas.

Activists today are taking up Dr. King’s mantle and reviving the Poor People’s Campaign.

King should be appreciated in his full complexity.

Recently unearthed surveillance documents show how the FBI tried to destroy the Poor People’s Movement.

Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”

In Knoxville, Tennessee, folks love sandwiches from a Fresh-O-Matic steamer like they love their grandmas.

It took much longer — and went much further — than we think.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

This footnote in New York Public Library history hints at a rich story of power, taste, and the crumbling of traditional gatekeepers.

The poorly crafted disease metaphor often accompanies a bad outcome.

Contending with the orientalist fears and fantasies of a young nation.

Inequality comes in waves. The question is when this one will break.

In 1950, the U.S. State Department fired 91 employees because they were homosexual or suspected of being homosexual.

Though significant, the end of the Cold War was not nearly as significant a turning point as President George H.W. Bush suggested it would be in 1990.

A review of "Great Society: A New History," by Amity Shlaes.

Andrew Delbanco's new book positions the debate over fugitive slaves as a central factor in the nation's slide toward disunion.

Andrew Bacevich makes the case that America’s elites wasted the promise of the post-Cold War era.

Ever since Kennedy-Nixon, televised debates have given viewers an insight into candidates' policies—and their personalities, too.

Why do they have to be such sore winners?

The only debate arrangement that everyone could agree to 60 years ago remains in place today – the game show format.

During the Cold War, cops at home and military personnel abroad exchanged techniques and tactics to mete out repression and thwart leftist insurgencies.

A pioneering black editor, he worked closely with African-American workers to advance a liberatory black politics.

The origins of the praline candy can be traced back to enslaved black women in Louisiana.

All white Southerners live with the sins of their fathers. But what if your dad was one of the most famous segregationists in history?