Ed Ayers

On this episode of BackStory, Brian sits down with Ed to talk about a project of his that’s been twenty-five years in the making.

John Kelly's statement about the Civil War is not surprising, but they are a reminder that we should still be worrying about the Civil War.

In his latest work of history, Edward Ayers captures daily life along with the military and political moves.

Stripping Virginia of its Lee tributes is far harder than it is in other places.

The Richmond Bread Riot broke out during the Civil War when working-class women in the South became fed up with food shortages.

We often think of the temperance movement as driven by white evangelicals set out to discipline Black Americans and immigrants. That history is wrong.

After Governor Northam announced its removal, two Richmond historians reflect on the legacy of the Lee Monument.

Ed Ayers visits the site where the transcontinental railroad was completed. He considers the project's human costs, and discovers how the environment and photography played key roles on the rails.

Ed Ayers visits public historians in Boston and Philadelphia and explores what “freedom” meant to those outside the halls of power in the Revolutionary era.

A new three-part PBS documentary explores the failure of Reconstruction and the Redemption of the South.

Reparations for African-Americans has been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail, but the debate goes back centuries.

A conversation with the lead designer of the 1985 version of the Oregon Trail video game.

The extremes to which Puerto Rican national Pedro Albizu Campos and his followers fought for independence.

The founder of the Olympic Project for Human Rights talks about the iconic protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the winners’ podium in 1968.

How the state’s past spurred a racial reckoning.

Why Pilgrims would be stunned by our "traditional" Thanksgiving table, and other surprising truths about the invention of our national holiday.

On the Oneida Community, a radical religious organization practicing “Bible communism,” and eventually, manufacturing silverware.

In the 1820s, Sarah Hale, a New England widow and the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book made it her mission to get Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday.

In the 1930s, 16 African-American families from the South rejected the American experiment and looked to Communist Uzbekistan for a chance to build a new world.

On the Loyalists who fled during the Revolutionary War – like Jacob Bailey, who saw freedom from tyranny with the British in Nova Scotia.