Tea Act protesters hanging a tarred and feathered man.

Banquo’s Ghost: The Contradictions of the American Revolution

A review of Joseph Ellis's reassessment of the Founding, arguing that slavery and Indigenous dispossession were central contradictions of 1776.
Conference of Studio Unions' months-long strike against Hollywood studios in 1945.

How Hollywood’s Black Friday Strike Changed Labor Across America

A 1945 union vs. studios battle set off broad right-wing hysteria—its lessons should resonate today.
Painting of of C.L.R. James.

The Dialectician

The paradoxes of C.L.R. James.
Illustration of W.E.B DuBois

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Abolition Democracy

The enduring legacy and capacious vision of "Black Reconstruction."
Watercolor and pen illustration of Eric Williams.

Eric Williams and the Tangled History of Capitalism and Slavery

This historian and politician helped transform how several generations understood 18th- and 19th-century history.
A painting of a slave ship.

New York City and the Persistence of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Even after slave trade was banned, the United States and New York City, in particular, were complicit in allowing it to persist.