Excerpts

How pitch, tonality, and celebrity imitation have portrayed cluelessness.

On the teachers' strike in West Virginia.

As the Statue of Liberty turned 100, our long battle over immigration was having its moment in Reagan’s America.

Three past conflicts tell a very different story.

When a Tufts instructor launched the trippy TV show on WGBH, it was unlike anything viewers had ever seen.

An unpopular Lyndon B. Johnson sought unity amid turmoil in his 1968 address to Congress.

The people who make it past 100, who watch the most history unfold, are almost all women.

Released 50 years ago, the report concluded that poverty and institutional racism were driving inner-city violence.

It’s unsurprising considering the public careers of today’s political leaders began in the 1970s.

Conservatives have used celebrity glitz effectively, too.

Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever.

From the meh (A Beautiful Mind) to the stunningly beautiful (Moonlight), and the classic (All About Eve) to the god-awful (Birdman).

Who was the most prolific African American filmmaker of the silent film era? That’s a question that has us asking, “were there any?”

His hands-off approach to policy-making and moral leadership hearkens back to much earlier times.

That's the conclusion of a psychology study published in the journal Sciece.

Music continues to hold an allure for elites seeking to politicize patriotism in support of their privilege.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans want to convince Americans that Southern heritage isn’t about slavery. Is it a lost cause?

How a fight over Native American symbolism in Oregon brought to light the conflict at America's core.

Immigrants eagerly joined the war cause both by joining the military and working in important industry at home.

There are two critical periods for Christmas. One is the Victorian era. The other is the 1960s.

After the urban unrest of the Long Hot Summer, a commission was formed.

On the 1870s skirmish between John D. Rockefeller and the upstart competitors who built the country’s first long-distance oil pipeline.

Why the American public is infatuated with the relationship between physical fitness and the presidency.

The celebratory month has its roots in the socialist and labor movements.

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and contradictory and all mine.

Seventy-five years before Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that newspapers were entitled to First Amendment protections.

Instead of revitalizing the Democratic coalition, the commission's report exposed the fractures in American society.

The long historical roots and continuing relevance of the disgraced preacher's story.

Senator Fred Harris describes his experience on the Kerner Commission, tasked with explaining the causes of urban riots in 1967.

Trump's unbridled rhetorical rampage has stripped the presidency of its moral ambition and authority. 

Mississippi’s outdated textbooks teach an abbreviated version of civil rights, undermining the state’s new ‘innovative’ standards.

"I'm Just a Slave" is a necessary song about Juneteenth.

A conversation with the author of a forthcoming book about the twists and turns of Marx's legacy in America.

His presidency was known for corruption, scandal, and booze. In a new book, Ron Chernow attempts to rehabilitate it.

Nazi Germany has closer ties to America and its history of institutionalized racism than some may think.

The notion that gun control has racist origins is popular in gun rights circles. Here's what's wrong with the claim.

Despite their large role in civil rights activism, black women have frequently been excluded from prominent positions in protests.

A genetic mutation in some New Mexico communities can be traced to a common ancestor who came to the area more than 400 years ago.

The story of the artist behind Exxon's famous logo.

A conversation with the creator of a virtual reality experience that takes you inside the protests leading up to MLK Jr.’s death.

Country music is assumed to be the soundtrack of the Republican Party. But it wasn't always that way.

During the Civil War, slave pens held captive Confederate soldiers. After, they became rallying points for a newly empowered community.

Partisanship is much more polarized by racial attitudes than it was 20 years ago.

African Americans are better off in many ways, but are still disadvantaged by racial inequality.

From highways carved through thriving ‘ghettoes’ to walls segregating areas by race, city development has a divisive history.

Recognizing that Americans are not the future of his religion, the late preacher embraced a global world.

The costs of achieving the centuries-old lexicographical dream of capturing the entire English language.

The United States wasn't filled with isolationists, and it wasn't exactly neutral before 1917.

The battle against the remnants of Confederate sentiment is a battle against both white supremacy and class rule.

“No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth: What shall be done with slaves?”