Excerpts

The right denounced it as “reverse racism,” while the liberal center hailed it as the endpoint of egalitarianism. But it has never been either.

Supporters of the “independent state legislature theory” are quoting fake history.

The Index of Deep Disadvantage reflects a more holistic view of how we can define "poverty."

Veterans of the 1848 German revolution immigrated to America with three passions burning in their hearts: barbells, beer, and socialism.

We're talking about the Battle of Little Bighorn all wrong.

The tiny downtown passage, where artists burned pallets for warmth, was home to Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin.

The answer may lie in the ear of the beholder.

Tourist interest is contributing to a more honest telling of the city’s role in the US slave trade. But tensions are flaring as South Carolina lawmakers restrict race-based teachings.

What the history of the 1918 Flu Pandemic can help us understand about today's public health measures.

What it means to be a Black worker in the time since slavery.

On the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan, we should remember that deploying the bomb wasn’t necessary to win the war.

Stories from the early days of air-conditioning in New York City movie theaters, and reflections on the technology's impacts in across the American South.

Unlike the Southern whites who moved en masse during the 20th century, these early migrants often had direct, personal ties to the institution of slavery.

Why we need to be critical of medical museums as spaces for disability histories.

Turns out Oppenheimer’s boss lied, repeatedly, about radiation poisoning.

Our ideas about sexuality and gender have changed before, and now they’re changing again.

A history as intertwined with race as with partisanship.

These 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump.

Sara Marcus’s recent book argues that from the Reconstruction to the AIDS era, a distinct aesthetic formed around defeat in the realm of politics.

The laundry: a place to play, grow up, and live out memories both bitter and sweet.

Trump champions “law and order” while calling for the Constitution’s suspension. But there’s no tension between the two.

On this date 78 years ago, the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Survivors involuntarily provided key medical data for years, without receiving any help.

Stars of the movie about an iconic Mattel toy are on strike. Both the company’s history and Barbie’s plot illuminate how powerful corporations really are.

Forced by the federal government to attend the schools, generations of Native American children were sexually assaulted, beaten and emotionally abused.

Meet the feuding twin sisters who popularized the American advice column.

At 12 years old, Martha Hodes was on board a hijacked plane and was taken hostage for a week. How did she forget much of the experience?

The commander in chief's unexpected death in office 100 years ago fueled decades of conspiracy theories but was most likely the result of a heart attack.

For centuries, the infamous Boss Tweed was blamed for destroying its dino-models—but what really happened is even weirder.

The “Barbie” movie glides over the history of dolls as powerful cultural objects.

Would the new owner of Richland Farm let a Black woman continue to visit to pay tribute to her enslaved ancestors?

How documenting the history of the drug war is a “community project” and reflections on 1990s rap music's anti-crack hits.

Where abolitionists and congressmen—including Lincoln—dined, debated, and became bedfellows.

On the importance of material ownership in the context of Black history.

Dan Flores reminds us that modern North Americans still walk in the footsteps of our fellow animals.

Uncovering a tradition of African American radicalism that was—and is—a crucial part of the American left’s history.

How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?

In yoga’s early days in the United States, skeptics warned it would lead people (e.g., women) of good faith and standing into paganism and ill repute.

Separate areas with sofas, vanities, and even writing tables used to put the “rest” in women’s restrooms. Why were these spaces built, and why did they vanish?

The ruthless logic driving our economy can be traced back to 19th-century Palo Alto.

The haute beachwear known as the bikini was named after a string of islands turned into a nuclear wasteland by atomic bomb testing.

The author was monitored for his political activities, but also for being gay. The surveillance took a toll on him.

It’s not a flavor; it’s a vibe.

He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., after he witnessed atrocities while liberating Nazi death camps.

Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Evian Conference in France in 1938, as the Holocaust loomed. It remains “an indelible stain on American and world history.”

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence– but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humans.

Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the institution.

Federal agencies awarded millions of dollars to scientific studies on Native American human remains, undermining the goals of tribes fighting for repatriation.

A collection of high school yearbooks from Cleveland captures the rise, fall, and uncertain future of the American middle class.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. came with censorship and obfuscation about the effects of the radiation on those who were exposed.

“If the public pool isn’t available and open, you don’t swim.”