Joseph Durham looking at an urn

The Care of the Dead: A Reading List

An interdisciplinary bibliography exploring the care of the dead and how our final choices are shaped by culture, religion, economics, technology, and war.
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.
Florestine Perrault Collins

Challenging Race and Gender Roles, One Photo at a Time

Florestine Perrault Collins escaped the bounds of prescribed gender roles and racial segregation to run a successful photography studio in 1920s New Orleans.
Blues musician B.B. King stands on the back of a truck with other African-American men to raise money for radio station WDIA's Wheelin' On Beale March of Dimes charity for pregnancy and baby health in circa 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee.

How Black Radio Changed the Dial

Black-appeal stations were instrumental in propelling R&B into the mainstream while broadcasting news of the ever-growing civil rights movement.
A print based on David Gilmour Blythe's fanciful painting of Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation: Annotated

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in America on January 1, 1863. Today, we've annotated the Emancipation Proclamation for readers.
Photograph: Robert Williams

Source: Photo by J. Wilds/Keystone/Getty Images

Armed Self-Defense in the Civil Rights Movement

When idealistic nonviolent activists encountered violence in the South as they registered Black voters, local leaders lent them protection.
Morgan Jerkins

Morgan Jerkins: Exploring the Multitudes within American Blackness

In her new book, Wandering in Strange Lands, Morgan Jerkins takes a deeply personal look at the effects of the Great Migration.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

The Madness of John Roberts

The Supreme Court’s pro-choice decision in June Medical Services v. Russo illustrates the Chief Justice's embattled relationship with precedent.
The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz

The Fear of Being Buried Alive (and How to Prevent It)

Pliny the Elder remarked: “Such is the condition of humanity, and so uncertain is men’s judgment, that they cannot determine even death itself.”
A woman with natural hair

How Natural Black Hair at Work Became a Civil Rights Issue

On the 55th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, U.S. courts are still divided about African Americans’ right to wear their natural hair in the workplace.