Genocide in California
The extermination campaigns against the Yuki people, sparked by the California Gold Rush and statehood, weren’t termed genocide until the mid 1970s.
Tuskegee University’s Audio Collections
The archives of the historically Black Tuskegee University recently released recordings from 1957 to 1971, with a number by powerful civil rights leaders.
Making Malt Liquor at Monticello
Thomas Jefferson thought whiskey was harmful to the country. Together with enslaved brewer Peter Hemings, he experimented with making less potent drinks.
Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton
Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity, explains historian Sven Beckert, helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
A Boatload of Knowledge for New Harmony
Leaders of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences voyaged down the Ohio River in 1825–1826, taking academic education on a journey in search of utopia.
Consuming Hawai‘i’s Golden People
With statehood in 1959 came “Aloha Spirit” tourism, turning Hawai‘i’s ethnic diversity into a commodity that benefited both business and US foreign policy.
How the Black Press Helped Integrate Baseball
In the 1930s and ’40s, Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier used their platform to help break the sport’s color line.
“A Time To Speak”: Annotated
On September 15, 1963, a bomb killed four Black children in Birmingham, Alabama. Who threw that bomb? Each of us, argued Birmingham lawyer Charles Morgan, Jr.
Vanillagate? Ice Cream Parlors and White Slavery
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no more dangerous place for a young white woman than the ice cream parlor.