Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights
Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”
African American Studies: Foundations and Key Concepts
This non-exhaustive list of readings in African American Studies highlights the vibrant history of the discipline and introduces the field.
How Chocolate Came to Europe
Pre-Columbian cultures valued chocolate highly as a drink, and often served it at important events. It wasn't made into a solid candy until 1847.
Fixing the Grassroots of the American Lawn
A citizen scientist bred low-mow, slow-grow grass that needs little water and fertilizer.
The African Roots of MLK’s Vision
“Ghana tells us that the forces of the universe are on the side of justice… An old order of colonialism, of segregation, discrimination is passing away now.”
Ralph Ellison on Race
Ralph Ellison believed fiercely in the American project and in the centrality of black people to it.
Jane Addams’s Crusade Against Victorian “Dancing Girls”
Jane Addams, a leading Victorian-era reformer, believed dance halls were “one of the great pitfalls of the city.”
Can We Live Without Air Conditioning?
Air conditioning is a profoundly paradoxical technology: the hotter it gets the more we use it, and the more we use it the hotter it gets.
How Women Crushed on One Another Back in the Day
Same-sex crushes and romantic friendships between college-age women were common throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Was Christine Jorgensen the Caitlyn Jenner of the 1950s?
“What is femininity anyway?” Jenner writes in her new book, The Secrets of My Life. Perhaps the famous trans woman Christine Jorgensen knew.