Frederick Douglass

When Charles Sumner died in 1874, a bill he had sponsored two years earlier threatened to overshadow his legacy.

On the Black doctors who received their medical degrees and a new sort of freedom in Europe.

Denmark Vesey expressed the Bible’s anti-slavery messages.

The US Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property.

Woody Holton’s "Liberty is Sweet" charts not only the contest with Great Britain over “home rule” but also the internal struggle over who should rule at home. 

Digitization allows researchers to trace editorial and authorial changes in archival content. Both are central to the study of this famous abolitionist pamphlet.

Pauline Hopkins, Booker T. Washington, and the Fight for The Colored American Magazine.

How shall a generation know its story, if it will know no other?

The Underground Railroad conductor's understanding of botany, wildlife biology, geography and astronomy allowed her to guide herself and others to safety.

From Phillis Wheatley to Lil Uzi Vert, Black names and their evolution tell the story of America.

Roscoe Conkling was a successful politician and an able lawyer. But the colorful and irascible senator had no desire to serve on the high court.

Political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. discusses his new memoir.

The most influential preacher in the country, Beecher aggressively agitated for the Union to extend complete forgiveness to Confederates.

As Frederick Douglass’s master put it, a slave who learned to read and write against the will of his master was tantamount to “running away with himself.”

On the devout abolitionists who excoriated American exceptionalism.

The erasure of Black leaders from the most misunderstood period in American history.

'Did slavery make home always somewhere else?'

Politics have diluted King's dream.

The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of census records and historical documents.

The temperance movement wasn’t an example of American exceptionalism; it was a globe-spanning network of activists and politicians against economic exploitation.