Revisiting Reconstruction
Reconstruction is one of the least-known periods of American history, and much of what people think they know about it may be wrong.
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.
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.
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.
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 on Race
Ralph Ellison believed fiercely in the American project and in the centrality of black people to it.
The Inequality Hidden Within the Race-Neutral GI Bill
While the GI Bill itself was progressive, much of the country still functioned under both covert and blatant segregation.
Charlottesville Syllabus: Readings on the History of Hate in America
The history of racism and ethnic hate in America is long and deep. What are the cultural, economic, and political currents that led us here?
The Devastation of Black Wall Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma. 1921. A wave of racial violence destroys an affluent African-American community, seen as a threat to white-dominated American capitalism.
A Precedent for Today’s Political Violence
Illegal violence has always been a political tool, often serving the interests of the powerful. A historian looks at the case of 1930s Birmingham, Alabama.