A pile of pots, pans, and kitchen utensils sits in front of a poster urging people to donate aluminum kitchen ware to help the US Air Force

The Environmental Costs of War

Using aluminum as a case study, a geographer shows how wartime "commodity chains" can devastate the Earth.
A photo of Emmett Till is included on the plaque that marks his gravesite at Burr Oak Cemetery in Aslip, Illinois.

How Local Newspapers Helped Emmett Till’s Murderers Go Free

Emmett Till was a boy of fourteen when he was lynched in Mississippi. The press would influence public opinion, and the outcome of the trial.
Protest Against Closing of Child Care Center

Is Childcare a Right?

Feminists supported universal childcare as a means of allowing women to advance in the workforce. But did this argument focus mostly on white women?
A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery illuminates the sky on August 21, 2019 in Norco, Louisiana

Environmental Racism and the Coronavirus Pandemic

COVID-19 is disproportionately deadly among people of color. Long-term environmental racism could be a major factor in this disparity.
A swarm of locusts by Emil Schmidt

How the Soviet Union Turned a Plague into Propaganda

The fight against locust swarms allowed the Soviet Union to consolidate power over neighboring regions.
Morgan Jerkins

Morgan Jerkins: Exploring the Multitudes within American Blackness

In her new book, Wandering in Strange Lands, Morgan Jerkins takes a deeply personal look at the effects of the Great Migration.
Pee Dee Rosenwald School, Marion County, South Carolina, c. 1935.

How Black Communities Built Their Own Schools

Rosenwald schools, named for a philanthropist, were funded mostly by Black people of the segregated South.
Interior of a London Coffee-house, 17th century

The News Junkies of the Eighteenth Century

Hooked on viral news (or is it gossip?), today's Twitter hordes owe a lot to history's coffeehouses.
Kimberlé Crenshaw

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Intersectional Feminism

Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw broke new ground by showing how women of color were left out of feminist and anti-racist discourse.
Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull

The Erotic Appeal of Alexander Hamilton

The handsome Founding Father has always had a robust fandom—even before the ten-dollar bill, or a certain musical.