From an interview with Eliza Hixon

Angela Proctor on the “Opinions Regarding Slavery: Slave Narratives” Collection

We spoke with Angela Proctor, head archivist at Southern University, about the collections of slave narratives compiled by John B. Cade from 1929-1935.
John B. Cade

John B. Cade’s Project to Document the Stories of the Formerly Enslaved

A recently digitized slave narrative collection consists of original manuscripts compiled by John Brother Cade and his students at Southern University.
Photograph: A Russian orphan in Kiev during the famine. Her parents died from starvation and she survives on charity from a neighbour. 1934

Memorializing Life Under Soviet Terror

A Russian court has ruled the country's oldest human rights organization must be dissolved. The work they do required trust from those who had lived under Stalin.
Poster promoting the Olympic bobsled run at Lake Placid

Antisemitism at the 1932 Winter Olympics

The 1932 Winter Olympics were a small foreshadowing of what was to come in 1936 Berlin.
Paris, France, 1900

Graffiti: Jaytalking in 19th Century Paris

The files of Paris police from the late nineteenth century reveal the tumultuous politics of the time through the graffiti recorded in them.
19th century lithograph telling the story of the 1763 attack by the Paxton Gang against the local tribe of Susquehannock peoples in Pennsylvania

Colonial Civility and Rage on the American Frontier

A 1763 massacre by colonial settlers exposed the irreconcilable contradictions of conquest by people concerned with civility.
Kazakhstan against a backdrop of bitcoin

Even in Kazakhstan, Bitcoin Can’t Escape Geopolitics

People in Kazakhstan have been protesting energy prices, and met with violence by the government. What does Bitcoin have to do with it?
Sing Sing prison, with warden T. M. Osborne and two other men, c. 1915

Were Early American Prisons Similar to Today’s?

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.
Animal magnetism

Mesmerizing Labor

The man who introduced mesmerism to the US was a slave-owner from Guadeloupe, where planters were experimenting with “magnetizing” their enslaved people.
White bucks shoes

White Shoes, WASPs and Law Firms

Law firms founded on Protestant identity necessitated the creation of firms that would hire those shut out by WASP gatekeeping.