How “Measured Militancy” Empowered California’s Fieldworkers
When Mexican-American fieldworkers' strikes didn't net results, César Chávez led the Ventura County Community Service Organization in alternate tactics.
W.E.B. Du Bois Fought “Scientific” Racism
Early 20th century intellectual W.E.B. DuBois countered the then-popular idea that African-Americans could be scientifically proven to be inferior.
The “Miscegenation” Troll
The term “miscegenation” was coined in an 1864 pamphlet by an anonymous author.
The Free People of Color of Pre-Civil War New Orleans
Before American concepts of race took hold in the newly-acquired Louisiana, early 19th-century New Orleans had large population of free people of color.
Whitewashing American History
One of the National Park Service's first historic preservation projects, the Colonial National Monument, wrote people of color completely out of the story.
How Love Transformed American Immigration Law
Love was a deciding factor in the expansion of Asian immigration to the United States, via laws that emerged from Congress in the 1960s.
Racial Violence as Impetus for the Great Migration
Historians traditionally point to economic and social conditions as the primary causes for the Great Migration, but racist hate crimes played a role as well.
The Man Behind the USA’s Decision to Build the Bomb
FDR's "czar of research," an electrical engineer named Vannevar Bush, was working on an atomic bomb months before Pearl Harbor.
Did Black Rebellion Win the Civil War?
Historians are giving credence to W.E.B. DuBois's assertion that enslaved workers coordinated a general strike, which helped end the Civil War.
The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis
After triumphantly leading the Lewis and Clark expedition, Meriwether Lewis was either murdered or committed suicide. Did syphilis play a role?