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Carrie Buck with her mother Emma.

The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement

It's impossible to revisit the history of America's quest for racial purity without sometimes being reminded of the current public discourse.
by Andrea DenHoed via The New Yorker on April 27, 2016

When Americans Thought Hair Was a Window Into the Soul

Christian, criminal or cowardly? People once thought your hair could hold the answer.
by Sarah Gold McBride via The Conversation on April 20, 2016

Harvard’s Eugenics Era

When academics embraced scientific racism, immigration restrictions, and the suppression of “the unfit”.
by Adam S. Cohen via Harvard Magazine on March 1, 2016

Donald Trump and the Return of the 1920s

We are again caught between nationalists longing for an imagined past, and activists invoking ideals the nation has not attained.
by Richard Yeselson via The Atlantic on December 30, 2015
Political cartoon depicting children recoiling from Catholic bishops crawling onto the beach with their robes and hats making them look like crocodiles.

When America Hated Catholics

In the late 19th century, statesmen feared that Catholics were something less than civilized (and less than white).
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on September 23, 2015
A white muscular man flexes confidently while sitting on a stool.
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Nose Knows Best

Nasology was a 19th century pseudoscience which claimed to explain personality traits based on the shape of a person’s nose.
via BackStory on July 10, 2015

37 Maps That Explain How America Is a Nation of Immigrants

It's impossible to understand the country without knowing who's been kept out, who's been let in, and how they've been treated once they arrive.
by Dara Lind via Vox on January 12, 2015
LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Massive Liberal Failure on Race, Part II

Affirmative action doesn't work. It never did. It's time for a new solution.
by Tanner Colby via Slate on February 10, 2014
Picture of William B. Shockley (1910-1989)

Indigenous Circuits

While researching the history of racism in Silicon Valley, Lisa Nakamura is surprised to discover the Navajo Nation's role in the creation of the tech industry.
by Lisa Nakamura via Computer History Museum on January 2, 2014

Political Construction of a Natural Disaster: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853

The conversation around race after Hurricane Katrina echoed discourse from another New Orleans disaster 150 years before.
by Henry M. McKiven Jr. via Journal of American History on December 1, 2007
Japanese internment camp

How Trump’s Anti-Trans Policies Mirror the WWII Persecution of Japanese Americans

A warning for us all about history repeating itself.
by Tracy Slater via Literary Hub on May 12, 2025
Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Who Shall and Shall Not Have a Place in the World?

Can the racialist and eugenicist roots of statistics can be cordoned off from “proper” science?
by Lily Hu via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 13, 2025
John Gast's 1872 painting "American Progress," in which Miss Columbia, a personification of the enlightening United States, is depicted leading pioneers over the western plains.

Two Years That Made the West

In a momentous couple of years, the young United States added more than a million square miles of territory, including Texas and California. 
by Elliott West via American Heritage on July 3, 2024
1882 newspaper headline following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 100-Year-Old Racist Law that Broke America’s Immigration System

The legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the launching of the Border Patrol, which inaugurated the most restrictive era of US immigration until our own.
by Mae Ngai via Public Books on May 28, 2024
graph of historic immigration data

How America Tried and Failed to Stay White

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.
by Eduardo Porter, Youyou Zhou via Washington Post on May 15, 2024
A photograph of four children standing, one is slouching.

Are You Sitting Up Straight? America’s Obsession with Improving Posture

In Beth Linker’s new book, she applies a disability studies lens to the history of posture.
by Laura Ansley via Perspectives on History on May 9, 2024
Liberian workers at the Firestone Plantation carrying buckets of latex in buckets on their shoulders.

The Human Price of American Rubber

Segregated lives of pride and peril on Firestone's Liberian plantations.
by Gregg Mitman via The Disappearing Spoon on December 7, 2023
An Audubon shearwater, named for John James Audubon, one of America's most famous birders and an enslaver

Dozens of Bird Names Honoring Enslavers and Racists Will be Changed

The American Ornithological Society says it will alter all human names of North American birds, starting with up to 80 species.
by Darryl Fears via Washington Post on November 1, 2023
A man wearing a COVID mask giving a passionate speech

Philadelphia's Fight Against Gun Violence, Poverty, and Crime

For decades, Philadelphia has struggled with poverty and gun violence. Social uplift organizations of the past have demonstrated that racial equity is the key.
by Menika Dirkson via Black Perspectives on August 31, 2023
Heinrich Harder's "Megatherium americanum," or elephant-sized ground sloth, 1908.

The Nature Trade

Dan Flores reminds us that modern North Americans still walk in the footsteps of our fellow animals.
by Michelle Nijhuis via New York Review of Books on August 1, 2023
Front entrance of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Mütter and More

Why we need to be critical of medical museums as spaces for disability histories.
by Aparna Nair via Disability Visibility Project on July 29, 2023
Boys at Kamloops Indian Residential School, probably before the 1920s.

We Must Not Forget What Happened to the World’s Indigenous Children

Thousands of Indigenous children suffered and died in residential ‘schools’ around the world. Their stories must be heard.
by Steve Minton via Aeon on July 21, 2023
Collage of Holmesburg Prison aerial view with a gloved hand picking up a medical vial in the foreground.

Holmesburg Prison's Medical Experiments Are Philadelphia's 'Lasting Shame'

For over 20 years, Dr. Albert Kligman experimented on incarcerated men at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. Those who profited have yet to redress the harm.
by Tamar Sarai via Prism on May 15, 2023
A flower.

A Structural History of American Public Health Narratives

Rereading Priscilla Wald’s "Contagious" and Nancy Tomes’ "Gospel of Germs" amidst a 21st-century pandemic.
by Amy Mackin via Assay Journal on March 25, 2023
Men standing around an archaeological site.

America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains

The remains of more than 100,000 Native Americans are held by prestigious U.S. institutions, despite a 1990 law meant to return them to tribal nations.
by Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz, Ash Ngu, Graham Lee Brewer via ProPublica on January 11, 2023
Black and white photo of Pruitt-Igoe buildings being destroyed.

Pruitt-Igoe: A Black Community Under the "Atomic Cloud"

In the 1950s, the U.S. military conducted unethical radiological experiments on Black communities, including the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Protean on November 28, 2022
A mural dedicated to George Floyd, left, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery in Tampa.
partner

Race, Class and Gender Shape How We See Age and Childhood

Assessing age — and protecting children — has always been subjective.
by Bill Bush, Erin Mysogland via Made By History on October 18, 2022
Headstones in Mount Auburn cemetery. Photograph by Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18003519.
original

A Tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery

Two centuries of New England intellectual history through the lives and ideas of people who are memorialized there.
by Kathryn Ostrofsky on September 7, 2022
Eugene Sandow lifting a dumbell.

Buff Boys of America: Eugen Sandow and Jesus

Under the influence of Muscular Christianity, Jesus transformed into a muscle-bound Aryan, saving souls through strength and masculinity.
by Matthew Wills, Rachel McBride Lindsey via JSTOR Daily on July 6, 2022
Chains with ivy on it

Endowed by Slavery

Harvard made headlines by announcing that it would devote $100 million to remedying “the harms of the university’s ties to slavery.”
by Andrew Delbanco via New York Review of Books on June 2, 2022
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