The Erie Canal at 200
Finished in October 1825, the Erie Canal connected increasingly specialized regions, altering the economic landscape of the northeast United States.
The Fifteenth Amendment: Annotated
The brevity of the Fifteenth Amendment of the US Constitution belies its impact on American voting rights.
Los Angeles’s War on Tramps
In the 1880s, Los Angeles began a large-scale project of incarcerating unemployed men whom they viewed as a threat to the vigor of white America.
The Long and Winding Island
New York’s Long Island has long served as a backdrop for social and political conflicts between the newly arrived and the established residents.
The Macronutrients of the Three Sisters System
If the intercropping of beans, squash, and corn produces smaller yields, why did the the Haudenosaunee prefer the Three Sisters system?
Honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day: A Reading List
With scholarship on Indigenous knowledge, environmental justice, resistance, and decolonization, this list honors Native sovereignty and self-determination.
How the Union Lost the Remembrance War
The victors of the American Civil War failed to write their story into the history books, leaving a gap for the mythologizing of the Confederacy.
“Declaration of Sentiments”: Annotated
The document that came out of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention extended the long-lived and hard-fought movement for women’s rights in the United States.
Miners and Monkeys
There were compensations for the hardscrabble life of the Gold Rush—like monkeys and parrots brought to California for companionship and entertainment.
Defining “White Trash”
The term “white trash” once was used to disparage poor white people. In the Civil Rights era, its meaning shifted to support business-friendly racial politics.