Ladies at the tellers’windows of the Fifth Avenue Bank, New York 1900

A Bank of Her Own

The first US bank for women was opened by a fraudster in 1879. It took 40 years for a reputable women’s bank to be founded in Tennessee.
A Hundred Years Peace: The Signature of the Treaty of Ghent (Belgium), 1814

The Treaty of Ghent: Annotated

The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, an oft overlooked conflict that continues to shape the politics and culture(s) of North America.
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 Fourth of July picnic, possibly in South Carolina, 1874, by J. A. Palmer

How Black Americans Co-opted the Fourth of July

After the Civil War, white southerners saw the Fourth of July as a celebration of Confederate defeat. Black southerners saw opportunities.
Buster Keaton putting his ear to cannon in a scene from the film 'The General', 1926

What Drove Buster Keaton to Try a Civil War Comedy?

“Someone should have told Buster that it is difficult to derive laughter from the sight of men being killed in battle.”
Juneteenth Emancipation Day Celebration, June 19, 1900, Texas by Mrs. Charles Stephenson

Juneteenth and the Emancipation Proclamation

The emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. took place over a protracted period. The articles in this curated list dig into the complicated history.
Map of Tennessee highlighting Former State of Franklin

Franklin, the American State that Wasn’t

Franklin was the 14th state of America. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it only lasted for four years.
A sign for the Highlander Folk School

The Destruction of a Civil Rights Center

The Highlander Research and Education Center is "the most notable American experiment in adult education for social change." One of its buildings recently burned down.
anti-abolitionist cartoon

How Antebellum Christians Justified Slavery

After Emancipation, some Southern Protestants refused to revise their proslavery views. In their minds, slavery had been divinely sanctioned.
I Am a Man

How the Memphis Sanitation Strike Changed History

How the Memphis Sanitation Strike, with its iconic “I AM A MAN” signs, helped deepen Martin Luther King, Jr.'s radicalism in the last months of his life.