Linda Brown Smith, Ethel Louise Belton Brown, Harry Briggs, Jr., and Spottswood Bolling, Jr. during press conference at Hotel Americana, 1964

Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated

The 1954 Supreme Court decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, declared that “separate but equal” has no place in education.
Lyndon B. Johnson addresses the Nation March 31, 1968

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Decision Speech: Annotated

United States President Lyndon B. Johnson’s televised announcement that he would not run for re-election shocked a nation divided by the Vietnam War.
Title page for Sinners in the hands of an angry God, 1741

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.
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.
From the cover of the September, 1990 issue of The Angolite, a newspaper published by the inmates of Louisiana State Penitentiary

The Fatal Current: Electrocution as Progress? 

The electric chair was promoted as civilized and at the same time imbued with the technological sublime, the mystery of electrical power harnessed by humans.
Three costumed girls, Pauline, Barbara and Dorothy Luck surrounding Halloween pumpkin, 1940

Halloween: A Mystic and Eerie Significance

Despite the prevalence of tricks and spooky spirits in earlier years, the American commercial holiday didn’t develop until the middle of the twentieth century.
Bessie Beatty

Woman on a Mission

For pioneering journalist Bessie Beatty, women’s suffrage and the plight of labor were linked inextricably.
A View of the Pearl-Fishery, created for George Henry Millar's The new and universal System of Geography, 1782

African Swimmers in American Waters

Although most enslaved people worked in the fields, captive workers with strong swimming and diving skills were also exploited by plantation owners.
National Police Gazette

Policing Abortion

A study on the criminalization of abortion in the late 1800s through the 1940s reveals that the law was often used against working-class women.
A couple holding hands

The Long History of Same-Sex Marriage

Same-sex marriages, in all possible configurations and with all possible motivations, have taken place throughout the history of the United States.