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Portrait of Robert Carter III

Like Washington and Jefferson, He Championed Liberty. Unlike the Founders, He Freed his Slaves

The little-known story of Robert Carter III.
Lithograph of people fleeing the Great Fire of Peshtigo on horseback and on foot.

Why America's Deadliest Wildfire Was Largely Forgotten

In 1871, the Wisconsin town Peshtigo burned to the ground, killing up to 2,500. But due to another event at the time, many have never heard about the disaster.
Jim Jones and family

In the Image of Jonestown

In our flattened historical imagination, pictures of atrocity and those of progress can coincide in unsettling ways.
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and first lady mark the 10th anniversary of the 2010 earthquake.
partner

Stereotypes About Haiti Erase the Long History of U.S.-Haiti Ties

After the assassination of the Haitian president, the U.S. should avoid old patterns of interference.
American Progress by John Gast, 1872. Painting depicting an angel hovering above white settlers heading west.

On Nostalgia and Colonialism on the New Oregon Trail

What does it mean to reform a game based on a violent history of land theft and appropriation?
Members of the Harvard branch of the KKK pose for 1924 graduation photo at the foot of John Harvard Statue

The Crimson Klan

The KKK was clearly present at Harvard. But the university rarely mentions the 20th century in its attempts to reckon with its past.
Photo of Jane Grant.

Confession of a Feminist I

A serialized biography of Jane Grant (1892-1972), first woman reporter at The New York Times and co-founder of The New Yorker.
Artistic rendering of a sheet of newspaper with people crossed out, flowing above people working menial jobs whose heads are also crossed out, working next to signs that read "Sorry."

On Atonement

News outlets have apologized for past racism. That should only be the start.
Drawings of houses

How Trees Made Us Human

More than iron, stone, or oil, wood explains human history.
Trump speaking in front of Mount Rushmore, stage lit, mountains in night's darkness
partner

Nostalgia and the Tragedy of Trump's Speech at Mount Rushmore

In a recent speech, Trump looks to America's past for answers. However, the history he recounts is glaringly limited.
Painting of men moving the liberty bell.

Our Chief Danger

The story of the democratic movements that the framers of the U.S. Constitution feared and sought to suppress.
a Black woman sits on stairs and looks out the window of an old New England style house

60 Enslaved People Once Toiled for a Rich Landowner in Medford

“This is not just history about Black Americans. This is American history. Slavery is American history. And we want people to understand that.”

J.F.K.’s “Profiles in Courage” Has a Racism Problem. What Should We Do About It?

Kennedy defined courage as a willingness to take an unpopular stand in service of a larger, higher cause. But what cause?
Billboard for "Gateway to the Canyons" featuring a painting of Plains Indians meeting Spanish Catholic monks.

The Black Legend Lives

A review of "Escalante’s Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest."
Statues of three men against a city backdrop

One Hundred Years Ago, a Lynch Mob Killed Three Men in Minnesota

The murders in Duluth offered yet another example that the North was no exception when it came to anti-black violence.

Rewriting Country Music's Racist History

Artists like Yola and Rhiannon Giddens are blowing up what Giddens calls a “manufactured image of country music being white and being poor.”
A group of men gather at a headquarters of the Communist Party USA following a protest demanding pay raise and an end to police brutality, US, circa 1920. Hirz / Archive Photos / Getty

How McCarthyism and the Red Scare Hurt the Black Freedom Struggle

Union activists linked the struggle for black equality in housing, employment, and at the ballot box, to the broader struggle against capitalist domination.

The Trouble with Comparisons

Comparison to Nazism and fascism distracts us from how we made Trump over decades.

The Tangled History of Illness and Idiocy

The pandemic is stress-testing two concepts Americans have historically gotten wrong.
Public art featuring silhouettes of enslaved people.

What Do We Want History to Do to Us?

Zadie Smith on Kara Walker, blackness and public art.

The Shoals of Ukraine

Why has Ukraine been a stumbling block for U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War?
St. Augustine

Forget What You Know About 1619, Historians Say. Slavery Began a Half Century Before Jamestown

African slaves had been in Florida 54 years before they arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. One historian says the 1619 narrative 'robs black history.'
Political cartoon about Reconstruction.

The Buried Promise of the Reconstruction Amendments

The historical context of the amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War, Eric Foner argues, are widely misunderstood.
Photo of Japanese American shops with employees and bicycles in front.

When Police Clamped Down on Southern California’s Japanese-American Bicycling Craze

Because cycling was an important mode of transportation for agricultural workers and a popular competitive sport, police saw it as a way to target immigrants.
Maybelle and Helen Carter.

For Women Musicians, Maybelle Carter Set the Standard and Broke the Mold

One of the most indispensable guitarists of all time, Carter was a quiet revolutionary.
Workers with a steam plough on a sugar plantation in Puerto Rico.

How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

The expansion of banks like Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and race.
Sparkle Moore performing with guitar

New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years.
Three Black men in a field wearing Baltimore Black Sox uniforms.

Bill Bruton’s Fight for the Full Integration of Baseball

Louis Moore discusses Bill Bruton and the erasure of his activism towards integration in Major League Baseball.
"Fleet" Walker (middle row, far left) poses with Oberlin College's first varsity baseball team in 1881. Walker went on to become the first African American major leaguer.

The First African American Major League Baseball Player Isn’t Who You Think

As the country celebrates Jackie Robinson Day, let’s consider the career of Fleet Walker.

The Prophet Is Human

A towering new biography of the great American orator and public intellectual Frederick Douglass.

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