Two pins calling for Angela Davis to be freed from prison

50 Years On: How Angela Davis’ Focus Changed in Jail

In a 2012 interview published in Social Justice, Angela Davis spoke about her detention in jail and how it informed her work on abolition and feminism.
J.P. Ball's Great Daguerrian Gallery of the West

Introducing “Archives Unbound”

In her new column, Dorothy Berry offers an inside look at the work of the digital archivist, while highlighting forgotten figures in Black print culture and public life.
Freedmans Village near Arlington Hights, Va., July 10th, 1865.

The Long Afterlife of Freedman’s Village

Freedman's Village, created in Arlington, VA at the end of the Civil War, became a thriving community of Black residents as part of Reconstruction.
A promotional image for Moon Over Harlem, 1939

How Film Ads Were Part of the Fight Against Segregation

In the Jim Crow era, Black film theaters were left out of the "first-run" distribution channels. Theater owners used creativity to attract their audiences.
Collage of Magazine and Newspaper coveres

Independent Voices of the Black American Press

The digitized newspapers in this open access collection offer insight into the country’s diverse civil rights movements following the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
A line of black civil war soldiers holding their rifles circa 1860

Black Soldier Desertion in the Civil War

The reasons Black Union soldiers left their army during the Civil war were varied, with poor pay, family needs and racism among them.
Donald Goines, from the back cover of an early edition of Dopefiend

Donald Goines, Detroit’s Crime Writer Par Excellence

The writer used hard-boiled fiction as a wide lens to accurately capture the widescreen disparity of Black life in the 1970s.
Troops of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps, Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument, 1896

Buffalo Soldiers and the Bicycle Corps

Buffalo Soldiers were assigned to assess bicycles as military transportation on the frontier at the end of the nineteenth century.
Adherents of Santeria celebrate Santa Barbara on December 4 , 2002 in Isla de la Juventud, Cuba.

Music and Spirit in the African Diaspora

The musical traditions found in contemporary Black U.S. and Caribbean Christian worship originated hundreds of years ago, continents away.
Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night

The Slap That Changed American Film-Making

When Sidney Poitier slapped a white murder suspect on screen, it changed how the stories of Black Americans were portrayed on film.