Produce is offered for sale at a grocery store on October 13, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

The Price of Plenty: Should Food Be Cheap?

The supermarket revolution made food more affordable and accessible than ever. But do the hidden costs of food feed into our illusions of justice and progress?
Map illustrating legal erasure of roads in Fort Reno Park in 1943, following the clearance of Reno, a neighborhood.

Segregation by Eminent Domain

The Fifth Amendment allows the government to buy private property for the public good. That public good was long considered the expansion of white neighborhoods.
Annie Grayson; Or, Life in Washington

Nancy Lasselle’s Washington Novels

Lasselle’s 1850s novels were the first to examine the entanglements of society and politics—including lobbying—in Washington, DC.
Deep zoom into Facts from 1836 Broadside Slave Market

Deep Zoom: 1836 Broadside “Slave Market of America”

Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, this single 77 by 55 centimeter sheet tells multiple stories in both text and illustration.
The DC motto

The Long Fight for D.C. Statehood

Will the District of Columbia ever get its own star on the American flag? It's been an uphill journey so far.
A girl scout troupe marching in parade in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn in the 1960s

Desegregating the Girl Scouts

The Girl Scouts had always professed that they were open to all girls. But how did that play out in segregated cities?
Soldiers in gas masks advance on World War I Bonus March demonstrators in Washington, D.C., July 1932.

How Tear Gas Became a Staple of American Law Enforcement

In 1932, the “Bonus Army” of jobless veterans staged a protest in Washington, DC. The government dispersed them with tear gas.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.”
Protestors from lesbian, gay and bisexual rights charity Stonewall, carrying a banner reading 'Lesbian & Gay Rights are Human Rights' during the Gay Pride parade in London, England, United Kingdom, 6 July 1996

The Stonewall Riots Didn’t Start the Gay Rights Movement

Giving Stonewall too much credit misses the movement’s growing strength in the 1960s, sociologists note.
National Guardsmen called out to quell race riots in Chicago in 1919

The Mob Violence of the Red Summer

In 1919, a brutal outburst of mob violence was directed against African Americans across the United States. White, uniformed servicemen led the charge.