Ashawnta Jackson is a reader, writer, and record collector living in New York. She has written for NPR Music, Bandcamp, Artsy, Atlas Obscura, and GRAMMY.com, among others. You can read more of her work at heyjackson.net.
De La Soul are known for the effect their use of samples had on their music sales and availability on streaming sites. They’re finally streaming. Why now?
Nancy Clem was a Gilded Age con artist whose swindles eventually turned deadly. Her crimes would test the era’s assumptions about class, gender, and criminality.
The Mississippi River flood that Smith allegedly memorialized happened weeks after she'd written and released her song. Where was the real “Back Water”?
Black women composers have been active in the US since at least the mid-nineteenth century, yet they’re largely omitted from scholarship on women musicians.
From 1857 to 1889, he could be found walking a 365-mile loop in western Connecticut and eastern New York. Everybody recognized him, but no one knew his name.
Opportunities were restricted during the so-called Heroic Age, but women still dreamed of exploration...and sometimes managed to reach the polar regions.
The Boston Typesetting Races of 1886 demonstrated the speed of women compositors, helping to lower the barriers to workplace equity for female “swifts.”
In 1892, the master cyclist set out to tour the world on wheels. A few months later, he disappeared, never to be heard from again. What happened to Frank Lenz?
The regulation of divorce has changed a lot in the twentieth century. The National Association of Women Lawyers was instrumental in making that change happen.
Environmentally oriented films from the classical era of Hollywood animation delivered powerful messages about the negative consequences of technological progress.
Where did potato chips come from? How about clams casino? Are the origin stories for these foods true, or do they fall into the category of “fakelore”?
