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The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

The class divide is already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part of the problem.
by Matthew Stewart via The Atlantic on May 16, 2018

Piecing Together a Border’s History, One Love Letter at a Time

Finding a puzzle from the past in a family member’s basement.
by Miroslava Chávez-García via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 16, 2018

Rewriting My Grandfather’s MLK Story

In excavating the story of King’s visit to Harlem Hospital, I uncovered my grandfather’s own fight for civil rights.
by Lena Felton via The Atlantic on April 3, 2018

I Am a Big Black Man Who Will Never Own a Gun Because I Know I Would Use It

On history, race, and guns in America.
by Kiese Laymon via Medium on April 3, 2018

The Quiet Genius of Margalit Fox’s Obituaries

For years, she’s injected subtle, deft works of cultural history into the New York Times.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on March 1, 2018

White Americans Fail to Address Their Family Histories

There is a conversation about race that white families are just not having. This is mine. 
by William Horne via The Activist History Review on February 9, 2018
Alice Lee Hum with her mother Jean, at a laundry on 21st Ave in Astoria, Queens, c. 1951.

How Childhoods Spent in Chinese Laundries Tell the Story of America

The laundry: a place to play, grow up, and live out memories both bitter and sweet.
by Eveline Chao via Atlas Obscura on January 3, 2018

An Intimate History of America

A reminder of history's proximity is prompted by a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
by Clint Smith via The Paris Review on December 18, 2017
Geronimo's tomb

Forgiving the Unforgivable: Geronimo’s Descendants Seek to Salve Generational Trauma

Traveling to the heart of Mexico for a Ceremonia del Perdón.
by Anna Badkhen via Literary Hub on November 21, 2017

Annotating the First Page of the Navajo-English Dictionary

“It is one thing to play dress-up, to imitate pronunciations and understanding; it is another thing to think or dream or live in a language not your own.”
by Danielle Geller via The New Yorker on November 7, 2017
original

A Refugee in Puerto Rico, 1942

Claude Lévi-Strauss and the burden of our personal archives.
by Benjamin Breen on October 6, 2017

Scaramucci’s Removal Evokes White House Turmoil During the Reagan Years

Anthony Scaramucci's resignation after 10 days broke a record held by Ronald Reagan’s communications director.
by Matt Giles via Longreads on July 31, 2017
Family photo of a woman pulling a child on a sled down a snowy street.

My Grandmother's Desperate Choice

My questions about my grandmother's death – from a self-induced abortion – haven’t changed since I was 12. What feels new is the urgency of her story.
by Kate Daloz via The New Yorker on May 14, 2017
Book cover with the title "Baby Boy Born Birthplace Blues" superimposed on a photo of a man lying down with his cheek on the ground.

Baby Boy Born Birthplace Blues

"The blues was born on a riverboat between Louisville and New Albany, along those docks, in the 1890s. I mean, the blues was born nowhere, of course. Or it was born many places."
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Oxford American on December 6, 2016
Drawing of a woman standing with blurred people behind her and computer text boxes pointing to her face.

Cracking the Code

It's impossible for most black Americans to construct full family trees, but genetic testing can provide some clues.
by Jesmyn Ward via The New Yorker on May 14, 2015
Photograph of blues singer Robert Johnson, playing guitar, 1936.

Searching for Robert Johnson

In the seven decades since his mysterious death, bluesman Robert Johnson’s legend has grown.
by Frank DiGiacomo via Vanity Fair on October 1, 2008
Cover of "Making Whiteness," featuring a Black man in front of a billboard of larger-than-life white faces.
partner

Making Whiteness

How a historian's family history informed her professional quest to unpack the stories white Southerners told about themselves.
by In Black America via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on September 1, 1998
Handwritten page and photo in Anne Frank's diary.

Who Owns Anne Frank?

The diary has been distorted by even her greatest champions. Would history have been better served if it had been destroyed?
by Cynthia Ozick via The New Yorker on September 28, 1997
Japanese screen depicting Europeans coming to trade.

The Last Witnesses: Preserving the History of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In the Embers series, historian M.G. Sheftall shares the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s last survivors and reveals why their testimony must endure.
by Kevin Dickinson via Big Think on August 20, 2025
The nuclear bomb cloud over Hiroshima.

Inside the Days, Hours and Minutes Leading Up to the Hiroshima Bombing

On the preparation and aftershocks of the attack that marked the beginning of the Nuclear Age.
by Iain MacGregor via Literary Hub on July 24, 2025
Wanto Company storefront with a sign that reads "I am an American."

Alien Enemies

The torturers have been revising, the gestapos have been busy, and the prisons have been full for generations.
by Brandon Shimoda via The Baffler on July 9, 2025
A hand holds a US flag and a pride flag in front of the Supreme Court building in a crowd celebrating the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
partner

How the Supreme Court Ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges Legalized Same-Sex Marriage

When Jim Obergefell and his partner John Arthur decided to marry after more than 20 years together, their home state refused to recognize same-sex marriages.
by Kit R. Roane via Retro Report on June 18, 2025
Line drawings of related is school desegregation activism.

How Brown Came North and Failed

Half a century ago the civil rights movement’s effort to carry the campaign for school desegregation from the South to the urban North ended in failure.
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on May 8, 2025
City College of New York in a still from Joseph Dorman’s Arguing the World, 1997.

The 176-Year Argument

How the City College of New York went from an experiment in public education to an intellectual hot spot for working class and immigrant students.
by Vivian Gornick via New York Review of Books on April 3, 2025
Harrison Williams holding a Camera.
partner

Seeking Clues in Cabinet Cards

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.
by April White via JSTOR Daily on February 17, 2025

History Teaches …

On being defeated.
by Felicia Kornbluh via The American Prospect on November 7, 2024
A group of children spinning on a merry-go-round.

The Parenting Panic

Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.
by Aaron Bady via Boston Review on October 30, 2024
Rupert Murdoch directing coverage in the New York Post's press room.

The Summer When the New York Post Chased Son of Sam

An oral history of the tabloid race to cover the serial killer.
by Frank DiGiacomo, Susan Mulcahy via Curbed on September 17, 2024
Aaron Henry of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation speaks at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

60 Years Ago, Courage Confronted Racism at the Democratic Convention

My grandmother and the fight over the 1964 Mississippi delegation.
by Margaret McMullan via The Bulwark on August 21, 2024
Bookstore

Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space?

In the online era, brick-and-mortar book retailers have been forced to redefine themselves.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on August 19, 2024
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