Past Voices
The painful, cutting and brilliant letters Black people wrote to their former enslavers. By Gillian Brodkwell / Wash Post
Civil rights legislation sparked powerful backlash that’s still shaping American politics. By Julian Maxwell Hayter / The Conversation
The Life of Louis Fatio: American Slavery and Indigenous Sovereignty. By Caroline Wood Newhall / AAIHS
Meet Bayard Rustin, often-forgotten civil rights activist, gay rights advocate, union organizer, pacifist and man of compassion for all in trouble. By Jerald Podair / The Conversation
Myth America review: superb group history of the lies that built a nation. By Charles Kaiser / The Guardian
The Museum Built on Native American Burial Mounds. By Logan Jaffe / Propublica
The Forgotten History of Chinese Railroad Workers Rises From the Texas Dust. By Zachary Small / NYT
Violent History Echoes in the Killing of Tyre Nichols. By Emil Yetlin / NYT
How some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom. By Viola Franziska Muller / The Conversation
Louis Congo: Ex-Slave and Executioner of Louisiana. By Menika Dirkson / AAIHS
Slavery’s Indelible Stain on a White Abolitionist Legend. By Michael Jeffries / NYT
John Hope Franklin and WWII as a Crisis of Democracy. By Thomas Cryer / AAIHS
What A. Philip Randolph Knew About Jobs and Freedom. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
How to Divide the Working Class. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
The five Black governors who came before Maryland’s Wes Moore. By Gillian Brockell / Wash Post
How a Sunken Slave Ship Set Off “a Search for Ourselves.” By Sam Jones / Mother Jones
Black Widows and the Struggle for Pensions after the Civil War. By Hilary Green / AAIHS
“Master Slave Husband Wife”: A startling tale of disguise to escape slavery. By Mark Whitaker / CBS News
The Mysterious 1934 Disappearance of Nation of Islam Founder, Wallace D. Fard. By Andrew Amelinckx / Grunge
Rev. F.D. Reese’s grandsons are ensuring his impact is never forgotten. By Claretta Bellamy / NBC News
A Fuller Black History of the Civil War. By Robert Greene II / AAIHS
Their families survived the Rosewood massacre 100 years ago. Here are their stories. By Nicquel Terry Ellis / CNN
American Myths Are Made Of White Grievance—And The Jan. 6 Big Lie Is Just The Latest. By Anthony Conwright / Mother Jones
Rosewood, Florida, marks 100 years since race massacre. Here’s what happened. By Nicole Chavez / CNN
Biden signs law to help preserve Japanese American WWII incarceration camps. By Kimmy Yam / NBC News
“They got Daddy”: Reckoning with my grandfather’s kidnapping, racial terror and our family’s trauma. By Sharon Tubbs / Salon
