Memphis bridge

The People’s Grocery Lynching, Memphis, Tennessee

On March 2, 1892, in Memphis, Tennessee, a racially charged mob grew out of a fight between a black and a white youth near People’s Grocery.
Freedmen's School

Bringing Universal Education to the South

2018 marks the 150th anniversary of a number of constitutional conventions in Southern states during Reconstruction. One lasting achievement was creating universal education systems.
Cornel West

Cornel West: Neoliberalism Has Failed Us

West speaks on Obama’s legacy, the failures of American empire, and the role of race in Trump’s election.
Monkeys illustration

Early America’s Troubled Relationship With Monkeys

The real and supposed resemblances between humans and non-human primates shaped American conversations about race and society.
Arlington Confederate Monument

The History of the History of American Slavery

In an age when the White House is being asked if slavery was a good or bad thing, perhaps we should take a look at the history of the history of slavery.
Tiffany Illinois mosaic

What Can Tiffany’s Mosaics Teach us about Stereotypes?

Tiffany’s glass mosaics can teach us a lot about stereotypes and nineteenth-century ideologies, particularly in the Marquette Buildings mosaic friezes.
Elaine Defendants

Black Organizing and White Violence

In 1919, armed posses and federal troops killed as many as one hundred African-Americans in one of the worst instances of mass violence in U.S. history.
Gone with the Wind poster

The Dangers of Gone With The Wind‘s Romantic Vision of the Old South

Writer Margaret Mitchell was born on November 8th, 1900, at the beginning of a new century. Her novel Gone ...
Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison on Race

Ralph Ellison believed fiercely in the American project and in the centrality of black people to it.
Dance hall illustration

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.”