Immigrants View The Statue Of Liberty, 1887

Birth of A National Immigration Policy

Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.
JT Roane alongside the cover of his book, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place

Historian J.T. Roane Explores Black Ecologies

Considerations of climate change and environmentalism have for too long paid no mind to where Black people live and in what conditions.
James Holman by Maull & Polyblank, c. 1855

James Holman, the “Blind Traveller”

Once a celebrated travel writer, Holman struggled to find a publisher for his books thanks to a Victorian reluctance to witness his disability.
Mason's Island

Island in the Potomac

Steps from Georgetown, a memorial to Teddy Roosevelt stands amid ghosts of previous inhabitants: the Nacotchtank, colonist enslavers, and the emancipated.
Convicts in Sydney, Australia, 1830

Colonial Masquerade: Convict, Pirate, Gentleman, Con

The convict ships that colonized Australia carried people desperate to get out of their sentence. At least, that was true of Michael Stewart.
Source: https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/313378

Self Care and Community in 1901 Indianapolis

For Black women engaged with local institutions, the “Delsarte” technique was a means of supporting struggling city residents while advancing political power.
Ambrotype of African American Woman with Flag - believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia

Home Front: Black Women Unionists in the Confederacy

The resistance and unionism of enslaved and freed Black women in the midst of the Confederacy is an epic story of sacrifice for nation and citizenship.
A woman kneels at the headstone in the Detroit Canine Cemetery in Michigan

An Epitaph for Fido

Pet cemeteries document how humans’ relationships with their pets—and their deaths—have evolved since the Victorian era.
Carter G. Woodson

Museum Roots

The founders of Black American museums in the post-World War II era were all shaped by Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro Canon” of history and art.
JSTOR Daily celebrates Black History Month

Celebrating Black History Month

JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for Black History Month.