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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Cost of Inflation in Prison
In prisons across the country, the long history of legal forced labor intersects with present-day inflation.
Dubious Medicine on the Texas Frontier
If you got sick in the Texas frontier area in the decades before the Civil War, your options were all pretty bad.
The Fourteenth Amendment: Annotated
Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution addresses citizenship rights, due process, and equal protection under the law.
How Jim Crow Divided Florida’s Cubans
In the late nineteenth century, many Cuban immigrants supported racial equality. That began to change as white supremacist terrorism grew in intensity.
The Actual Louisiana Purchase Price
The $15 million price tag of the Louisiana Territory has been described as one of the greatest real estate bargains ever. But what did that actually buy?