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How The Hutchinson Family Singers Achieved Pop Stardom with an Anti-Slavery Anthem

"Get Off the Track!" borrowed the melody of a racist hit song and helped give a public voice to the abolitionist movement.
Corey M. Brooks, Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

#FEELTHEBIRNEY

The most important third party in the history of American politics is one you may never have heard of before.
Booker T. Washington writing at a desk.

Toward a Usable Black History

It will help black Americans to recall that they have a history that transcends victimization and exclusion.

3 Reasons the American Revolution Was a Mistake

Washington changed the world forever when he crossed the Delaware—for the worse.
A painting of U.S. Navy Lt. Stephen Decatur battling Muslim sailors, Tripoli, August 1804.

America’s Forgotten Images of Islam

Popular early U.S. tales depicted Muslims as menacing figures in faraway lands or cardboard moral paragons.

Black History Is American History

What is the greatest libertarian accomplishment of all time? The abolition of slavery.
Raised scars on the back of a formerly enslaved man.

“A Typical Negro”

Gordon, Peter, Vincent Colyer, and the story behind slavery's most famous photograph.

The Weeping Time

A forgotten history of the largest slave auction ever on American soil.
Side-by-side portraits of Franklin Pierce and Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix and Franklin Pierce: The Battle for the Mentally Ill

Dorothea Dix and Franklin Pierce were in many ways ideological soulmates, but he would not help her effort to improve conditions for the mentally ill.
Thaddeus Stevens imagined as a boxer.

Remarkable Radical: Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens was a fearsome reformer who never backed down from a fight.

A Topic Best Avoided

After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln faced the issue of sorting out a nation divided over the issue of freed slaves. But what were his views on it?
John Ridge

Cherokee Slaveholders and Radical Abolitionists

An unlikely alliance in antebellum America.
Harriet Beecher Stowe imagining her characters.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Art of Persuasion

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

Phillis Wheatley: an Eighteenth-Century Genius in Bondage

Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the first ever African-American woman to be published.
Black and white divided star on the cover of "Two Nations" by Andrew Hacker.

The American Dilemma

The moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination.
Lincoln, Washington, and a snippet from a lyceum address.

The Lincoln Way

How he used America’s past to rescue its future.
Collage illustration of a founder, Declaration of Independence, and the body of an enslaved person whose arms are in chains.

Whose Independence?

The question of what Jefferson meant by “all men” has defined American law and politics for too long.
Charles Sumner

The Senator Will Not Yield

Charles Sumner's example reminds us that "with enough courage and drive, can alter the trajectory of American racial history."
Totwar Land Office building.

No Place of Grace

Coming to terms with free-state slavery through historic buildings and public history.
Samuel Gompers the president of the American Federation of Labor in December 1920.

America’s Brutal Capitalist Class Tamed Its Labor Movement

The unique brutality of the US capitalist class bred a labor movement that has often limited itself to being a private insurance provider.
Graphic of a nickel displays the words "nullification," "compact," and "sever" on Jefferson's head.

Thomas Jefferson Would Like A Word With You

Thomas Jefferson's limited government ideal quickly conflicted with the U.S. Constitution and the dominant Federalist Party, prompting a radical proposal.
Charles Sumner

How Charles Sumner Convinced Abraham Lincoln and the Union To Take a Stand Against Slavery

The domestic and international dynamics of the early days of the Civil War.
Karl Marx gazing off into the distance while surrounded by books

Karl Marx’s Legacy in the United States

For two centuries, Karl Marx’s thoughts have significantly impacted US politics. In turn, his close study of the US informed the development of his ideas.
Mark Twain sits in thought on stone steps surrounded by nature while holding papers

Twain Dreams

The enigma of Samuel Clemens.
The “Visscher Map of the New World” including North and South America, 1658.

The Impossibly Intertwined History of the Americas

A conversation with Greg Grandin about his groundbreaking new book "America, América: A New History of the New World."
Harvard University "veritas" seal displayed on flags on its campus.

Harvard Stood Up to Trump. Too Bad the School Wasn’t Always So Brave.

The university’s last “finest hour” was more than 200 years ago.
A drawing of cannons being fired at Fort Sumter.

What Can We Learn From the Jewish Debate Over Slavery?

This Passover, American Jews should embrace the fight for “emancipation of all kinds.”
An 1851 painting of Patrick Henry speaking to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

Discover Patrick Henry’s Legacy, Beyond His Revolutionary ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’ Speech

Delivered 250 years ago, the famous oration marked the Henry’s influence. The politician also served in key roles in Virginia’s state government.
Black and white photograph of a lake.

Not So Close

For Henry David Thoreau, it is only as strangers that we can see each other as the bearers of divinity we really are.
Collage of protesters holding up signs against war taxes.

Could Tax Protests Defund the American War Machine?

Tax resistance has long opposed war and empire in North America, and could be a way to resist U.S. funding of violence in Gaza today.

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