From the cover of Paahao Press, Summer 1960

A Century of History in Five Hawaiian Prison Newspapers

Hawaiian language and culture are emphasized throughout, ranging from before statehood and during martial law to modern day women's prisons.

Eastern Kentucky University American Slavery Collection

Sixteen documents, including slave bills of sale, tell the cruel story of the enslaved lives that were listed in ledgers.
Community Service Organization (CSO) Voter registration drive, 1958

Money and Activism: Mixed Messages

During the Cold War, philanthropic paternalism put Mexican American grassroots activists in the American Southwest at odds with East Coast funding institutions.
A Black man in the dock following claims of a plot by enslaved people in New York to revolt and level New York City with a series of fires, at an unspecified court in New York, 1741

Was the Conspiracy That Gripped New York in 1741 Real?

Rumors that enslaved Black New Yorkers were planning a revolt spread across Manhattan even more quickly than fires for which they were being blamed.
Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan at the Victory celebration for the 1966 Governor's election at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles California

Ronald Reagan v. UC Berkeley

In the late 1960s, gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan made political hay by picking a fight with UC Berkeley over student protest and tenured “radicals.”
Eugene Debs in prison at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, overlaid with his 1920 presidential campaign button

A Million Americans Once Voted for an Incarcerated Socialist

Eugene Debs campaigned for both president and prison reform from a federal penitentiary. His critiques of the prison system still resonate.
A woman smiles while holding bottles of various types of alcohol, including peach brandy, port wine, gin, absinthe, and forbidden fruit.

Whiskey, Women, and Work

Prohibition—and its newly created underground economy—changed the way women lived, worked, and socialized.
President Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Main Street, minutes before the assassination

JFK’s Assassination and “Doing Your Own Research”

Revelations about secret government programs after Kennedy’s assassination increased the power of conspiracy theories and the fervor of those who set out to expose them.
War Camp Community Service. Newport News. American Library Association. c. 1919

Uncle Sam Wants You to Donate Books!

During World War I, the American Library Association built libraries on military training camps in a project that championed patriotism, literacy, and self-improvement.
1935: Nazi leader Adolf Hitler speaks in front of microphones and gestures with his hands. Original Publication: From the newsreel 'The March of Time'. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A Cancelation in 1934

A writer for the Baltimore Sun compared Hitler to the sixteenth-century Catholic Saint Ignatius. Archbishop Curley had something to say about that.