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A line of people swearing in as Ghanaian citizens.

The Land Disputes Facing African Americans in Ghana

Locals complain of losing out as wealthier ‘returnees’ from abroad secure prime real estate.
by Philip Teye Agbove via New Lines on February 27, 2025
A photograph of saxophonist Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964.

Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century African American Expatriates

An exhibition in Seattle spotlights the Black artists and performers who called Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden home between the 1930s and the 1980s.
by Tamara J. Walker via Smithsonian on June 20, 2024
Sedat Pakay, James Baldwin, Istanbul, 1966.

James Baldwin in Turkey

How Istanbul changed his career—and his life.
by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi via The Yale Review on June 12, 2023

The Irish-American Social Club Whose Exploits Sparked a New Understanding of Citizenship

In 1867, the Fenian Brotherhood was caught running guns to Ireland, precipitating a diplomatic crisis.
by Lucy E. Salyer via Zócalo Public Square on March 21, 2019
Japanese-American man in a military uniform.

He Spent His Life Trying to Prove That He Was a Loyal U.S. Citizen. It Wasn’t Enough.

How Joseph Kurihara lost his faith in America.
by Andrew Aoyama via The Atlantic on July 9, 2025
Samuel Ringgold Ward

The Many Lives of Samuel Ringgold Ward

A new biography examines the life of the abolitionist, newspaper editor, activist, and globetrotter.
by Kellie Carter Jackson via The Nation on October 18, 2023
Samuel Ringgold Ward and Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass Thought This Abolitionist Was a 'Vastly Superior' Orator and Thinker

A new book offers the first full-length biography of newspaper editor, labor leader and minister Samuel Ringgold Ward.
by Richard Blackett via Smithsonian on March 24, 2023
Maxim and Ivy Litvinov

The People’s Ambassadress: The Forgotten Diplomacy of Ivy Litvinov

How Ivy Litvinov, the English-born wife of a Soviet ambassador, seduced America with wit, tea and soft diplomacy.
by Brigid O'Keefe via Aeon on March 29, 2021
Illustration of a Black man in an overcoat and a winter hat with earflaps.

Homeland Insecurity

Mystery sorrounds the life of alumnus Homer Smith, who spent decades on an international odyssey to find a freedom in a place he could call home.
by Jack El-Hai via University of Minnesota on May 31, 2019

The 19th-Century African-American Actor Who Conquered Europe

And why you might never have heard of Ira Aldridge.
by Natasha Frost via Atlas Obscura on August 7, 2017
An artistic collage juxtiposing a transatlantic slave ship with a tenement in Harlem.

How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Continues to Impact Modern Life

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.
by Jennifer L. Morgan via Smithsonian on November 7, 2024
Abstract painting of Black people.

The Messiness of Black Identity

Can language unify the people?
by Doreen St. Félix via The New Yorker on September 7, 2024
James Baldwin

The Brilliance in James Baldwin’s Letters

The famous author, who would have been 100 years old today, was best known for his novels and essays. But correspondence was where his light shone brightest.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on August 2, 2024
Frederick Douglas.

What Frederick Douglass Learned from an Irish Antislavery Activist

Frederick Douglass was introduced to the idea of universal human rights after traveling to Ireland and meeting with Irish nationalist leaders.
by Christine Kinealy via The Conversation on June 14, 2024
Women rebels in Mexico aim rifles.

Evelyn Trent Was One of America’s Great Revolutionaries

Best remembered as the partner of Indian revolutionary M. N. Roy, Evelyn Trent was an anti-colonial feminist who helped initiate India’s communist movement.
by Jesse Olsavsky via Jacobin on March 9, 2024
Police officer Lane Anderson removes a Patriotic Front sticker from a stoplight outside the Liberian Restaurant in downtown Fargo, N.D.
partner

The Shared U.S.-Liberia History Now Shaping a North Dakota Community

Liberians in West Fargo trying to dodge racism are deeply woven into American history.
by Karen Masterson via Made By History on December 16, 2022
National portrait of W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)

This long overdue tribute honors historian W. E. B. Du Bois, who died on August 27, 1963.
by David Levering Lewis via Perspectives on History on December 6, 2022
Black-and-white glamour photo of Josephine Baker, smiling in her stage attire.

Josephine Baker Was the Star France Wanted—and the Spy It Needed

When the night-club sensation became a Resistance agent, the Nazis never realized what she was hiding in the spotlight.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on August 8, 2022
Ballots in sealed envelopes, in a plastic box with a sticker that reads "Vote NYC."
partner

You Didn’t Always Have to Be a Citizen to Vote in America

The electorate has consistently changed over time as politicians seek to shape it in their favor.
by Rachel Michelle Gunter via Made By History on December 29, 2021
Drawing of Asian Americans on an urban river boardwalk.

Return Flights

The memoirs of Korean adoptees, once full of confession and confusion, are now marked by confidence and rage.
by E. Tammy Kim via New York Review of Books on December 23, 2021
tintype portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln

The Insanity Trial of Mary Lincoln

How the self-proclaimed "First Widow" used her celebrity to influence public opinion.
by Alexis Coe via Study Marry Kill on November 23, 2021
Richard Wright.

Outcasts and Desperados

Reflections on Richard Wright’s recently published novel, "The Man Who Lived Underground."
by Adam Shatz via London Review of Books on October 4, 2021
Illustration of a 1920s party in a martini glass

On Imagining Gatsby Before Gatsby

How a personal connection to Nick Carraway inspired the author to write the novel "Nick."
by Michael Farris Smith via Literary Hub on January 11, 2021
The author's great-grandparents, Ida Brown and Nathan “Jack” Dashow, in their 1920 wedding photo.

How My Great-Grandmother Lost Her U.S. Citizenship The Year Women Got The Right to Vote

In 1920, my American-born great-grandmother, Ida Brown, married a Russian immigrant in New York City.
by Jayne Orenstein via Retropolis on August 13, 2020

Since Emancipation, the United States Has Refused to Make Reparations for Slavery

But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million—not to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers.
by Kali Holloway via The Nation on March 23, 2020
Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson and the Declaration

Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence announced a new epoch in world history, transforming a provincial tax revolt into a great struggle to liberate humanity.
by Peter S. Onuf via American Heritage on January 1, 2020

The Old Man and His Muse: Hemingway’s Toe-Curling Infatuation with Adriana Ivancich

For the last decade of his life, the sozzled Hemingway was in thrall to an Italian 30 years his junior.
by Nicholas Shakespeare via The Spectator on September 1, 2018
Svetlana Stalin being photographed

My Secret Summer With Stalin’s Daughter

In 1967, I was in the middle of one of the world’s buzziest stories.
by Grace Kennan Warnecke via Politico Magazine on April 29, 2018
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman sitting together.

When the World Became a Huge Penitentiary

An eloquent portrait of underground life among the undocumented and the damned of the earth.
by Emma Goldman, Vivian Gornick via The Nation on March 23, 2015

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