Portrait of Frederick Douglass

Some Facts About Frederick Douglass

President Trump praised abolitionist Frederick Douglass in his first remarks on Black History Month.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Black Lives

As historians continue to interrogate slavery’s lasting reverberations, narratives produced by slaves themselves have become a kind of ...
Harpers Ferry illustration

John Brown: Feared Fanatic or Freedom Fighter?

Murderous terrorist fanatic or freedom fighter? No figure in American history raises that question more than John Brown.
Roanoke baptism

Our Long Roanoke Nightmare

The sixth season of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story focuses on the mysterious lost colony of Roanoke.
Georgetown University in 1850

Slavery and the Church

It wasn't just educational institutions like Georgetown University that profited off of slavery; churches, too, were complicit in the system.
Jamaican plantation

The Obscured History of Jamaica’s Maroon Societies

Maroon societies in Jamaica and the rest of the Americas have survived for hundreds of years.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797) John Opie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Mystery Man in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Life

Gilbert Imlay already had a bad reputation before his biographer discovered he was a slave trader.
Cormorants on a Guano Island

Are We Entering a New Golden Age of Guano?

A history of civilization could be written in fertilizers. And the history of guano—bird poop—tells us a lot about slavery, imperialism, and U.S. expansion.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "Sugar cane plantation; [Jamaica.]" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 27, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-94a7-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Sugar Has Always Been Bad

Sugar long had a bad reputation because of its connection to slavery in the New World.
Grandchildren of slaves.

A Formerly Enslaved Woman Successfully Won a Case for Reparations in 1783

In one of the earliest examples of reparations, an ex-slave named Belinda petitioned the government and was granted an annuity.