plantations — Bunk History

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Historians Uncover Slave Quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

Archaeologists have uncovered the slave quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello mansion.

by Michael Cottman via NBC News on July 3, 2017

Chronicling “America’s African Instrument”

The banjo's history and its symbolism of community, slavery, resistance, and ultimately America itself.

by Laurent Dubois, Stephanie Kingsley via Perspectives on History on June 19, 2017

Strummin’ on the Old Banjo

How an African instrument got a racist reinvention.

by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on October 4, 2016

Prisoners hoeing a field at Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas, 1972.

Prison Plantations

One man’s archive of a vanished culture.

by Maurice Chammah via The Marshall Project on May 1, 2015

Painting of Hannah.

Hannah, Andrew Jackson’s Slave

A favorite of Old Hickory, she made him seem kinder than he was. Why?

by Mark R. Cheathem via Humanities on March 10, 2014

U.S Custom House.

Lessons from Early America’s Tariff Wars

The 1790s debate shows that, even when they aim at moral goods, tariffs abet cronyism and corruption.

by John C. Pinheiro via Law & Liberty on April 23, 2025

George Washington Knew the Difference Between Running a Business and Running the Government

The first businessman president realized that working with Congress – not alone or against it – was the best way to create an efficient federal government.

by Eliga Gould via The Conversation on March 10, 2025

A family of formerly enslaved people outside their house in Fredericksburg, Virginia, circa 1862–1865.

The Missing Persons of Reconstruction

Enslaved families were regularly separated. A new history chronicles the tenacious efforts of the emancipated to be reunited with their loved ones.

by Joshua D. Rothman via The New Republic on February 26, 2025

A drawing of a slave revolt on a ship.

Rare Portraits Reveal the Humanity of the Slaves Who Revolted on the Amistad

William H. Townsend drew the rebels as they stood trial, leaving behind an invaluable record.

by Kate McMahon via The Conversation on February 3, 2025

Black farmer harvesting kale.

Black Earth

In North Carolina, a Black farmer purchased the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved—and is reclaiming his family’s story and the soil beneath his feet.

by Christina Cooke via The Bitter Southerner on November 25, 2024

The Second Abolition

Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.

by Manisha Sinha via The Nation on November 19, 2024

Drawing of a classic pirate figure, wtih an earring, a tricorn hat, and a satchel, yelling orders at a crew while a ship burns in the background

Were Pirates Foes of the Modern Order—or Its Secret Sharers?

We’ve long viewed them as liberty-loving rebels. But it’s time to take off the eye patch.

by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on July 15, 2024

Chiquita Must Pay for Its Crimes in Latin America

70 years since President Árbenz was ousted for standing up to Chiquita, the firm might finally be held to account for its ties to a far-right paramilitary group in Colombia.

by Klas Lundström via Jacobin on July 10, 2024

Map of West Florida.

From Subjects To Citizens

The West Florida revolt in the Age of Revolutions.

by Colin Mathison via Age of Revolutions on July 8, 2024

A rally for the 1970 Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention hosted by the Black Panthers.

Democracy Was a Decolonial Project

For generations of American radicals, the path to liberation required a new constitution, not forced removal.

by Aziz Rana via Boston Review on May 30, 2024

Sheet music for "Massa's in de Cold Ground" as sung by Christy's Minstrels.

Christy’s Minstrels Go to Great Britain

Minstrel shows were an American invention, but they also found success in the United Kingdom, where audiences were negotiating their relationships with empire.

by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on March 27, 2024

The First Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, 1848.

What American Divorces Tell Us About American Marriages

On the inseparable histories of matrimony and disunion in the United States.

by Lyz Lenz via Literary Hub on February 22, 2024

Black and white photograph of an abandoned house with bare trees surrounding it

This Peaceful Nature Sanctuary in Washington, D.C. Sits on the Ruins of a Plantation

Before Theodore Roosevelt Island was transformed, a prominent Virginia family relied on enslaved laborers to build and tend to its summer home.

by Sue Eisenfeld via Smithsonian on February 7, 2024

Performers from "Black America"

Nate Salsbury’s "Black America"

The 1895 show purported to show a genuine Southern Black community and demonstrate Black cultural progress in America, from enslavement to citizenship.

by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on January 25, 2024

Remembering Slavery

At museums and historic sites throughout the American South, a fuller and more complex picture of slavery is finally taking shape.

by Ed Ayers on January 8, 2024

Leaders of the 1963 March on Washington posing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial. August 28, 1963.

How the 1619 Project Distorted History

The 1619 Project claimed to reveal the unknown history of slavery. It ended up helping to distort the real history of slavery and the struggle against it.

by James Oakes via Jacobin on December 27, 2023

The author’s mother, 1927.

Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life

In "Ordinary Notes," Sharpe considers Black culture “in all of its shade and depth and glow.”

by Omari Weekes via The Nation on December 13, 2023

Texas Mission bell.

A Bell's Journey Through Texas History

For those in later years, the bell’s value lay not in its powerful sound, but in its visual representation.

by Kristin Dutcher Mann via Commonplace on October 3, 2023

Common black rat in nest.

In Colonial Williamsburg, Thieving Rats Save History

Historians owe a debt of gratitude to these furry pilferers.

by Amy Crawford via Atlas Obscura on August 10, 2023

Africa, the Center of History

A new book works to counteract the “symphony of erasure” that has obscured and denied Africa’s contributions to the contemporary world.

by Adom Getachew via New York Review of Books on July 27, 2023

Georgetown University building.

Confronting Georgetown’s History of Enslavement

In “The 272,” Rachel L. Swarns sets out how the country’s first Catholic university profited from the sale of enslaved people.

by Paul Elie via The New Yorker on June 27, 2023

Five generations of a family pose at the plantation where they were enslaved, soon after Union forces arrived in Beaufort, South Carolina, 1863.

More Than 100 U.S. Political Elites Have Family Links to Slavery

Among America's political elite, 5 living presidents, 2 Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 legislators have ancestors who enslaved Black people.

by Tom Lasseter, Lawrence Delevingne, Makini Brice, Donna Bryson, Nicholas P. Brown, Tom Bergin via Reuters on June 27, 2023

A page of the 1838 deal by the Jesuits to sell 272 enslaved people.

The Families Enslaved by the Jesuits, Then Sold to Save Georgetown

In 1838, leaders of the Catholic order faced opposition from their own priests, but pressed forward with the sale of 272 human beings anyway.

by Rachel L. Swarns via Retropolis on June 15, 2023

Cast of the opera "Omar" on stage, with Arabic script on the stage backdrop.

‘Tell Your Story, Omar’

A new, Pulitzer Prize–winning opera adapts the memoir of Omar ibn Said, an African Muslim who spent much of his life enslaved in North Carolina.

by Edward Ball via New York Review of Books on May 4, 2023

People working in fields, figures in an account book, and a copy of the Guardian newspaper.

Guardian Owner Apologises for Founders’ Links to Transatlantic Slavery

Scott Trust to invest in decade-long programme of restorative justice after academic research into newspaper’s origins.

by David Olusoga via The Guardian on March 28, 2023

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