Excerpts

For a century, school showers have anticipated the current debate about bathrooms.

The national dish is really a fusion of immigrant fare.

Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis 50 years ago to help 1,300 black sanitation workers on strike. Ozell Ueal was one of them.

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a galvanizing event, but the premature end of a movement that had only just begun.

Johnny Appleseed was based on a real person, John Chapman, who was eccentric enough without the legends.

With roots in race and gender discord, has the “tomboy” label worn out its welcome?

MLK was a master television producer, but the networks had a narrow view of what the black struggle for equality could look like.

In the 1920s, women's love of driving in auto-obsessed Los Angeles created traffic jams and a battle over women’s rightful place.

A review of "The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap."

Nuclear heritage and nuclear stewardship in a quiet desert town.

How did Niagara Falls become the Honeymoon Capital of the World?

Rosa Parks shook the world of Jim Crow by refusing to give up her seat to a white man on her way home from work.

Trump ally Carl Higbie recently cited Japanese internment camps during World War II as a “precedent” for a proposed registry of Muslims in the U.S.

This is not "forbidden knowledge." It is America’s most ancient justification for bigotry and racial inequality.

How a backer of the American Revolution unwittingly shaped the way we count money.

No other city has taken down a monument to a president for his misdeeds, but Arcata is poised to do just that with a statue of William McKinley.

Abortion was first criminalized in the mid 1900s amidst concerns that too many white women were ending their pregnancies.

The history and business of spring baseball.

With wiretapping in the headlines and smart speakers in millions of homes, a look back to the early days of eavesdropping.

Soviet ban? What Soviet ban?

It’s a history lesson worth remembering: The exploitation of immigrant workers only encourages more—and worse—abuse.

The founders of Women’s Studies were overwhelmingly white, and focused on the experiences of white, heterosexual women.

Today, we tend to assume dieting is for women, but in the 1860s, it was a masculine pursuit.

Ellis Island celebrates its 125th anniversary as the federal immigration depot.

Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer lived in an open lesbian relationship and helped found the field of home economics.

Seventy-four years ago today, lawmakers passed an amendment to the U.S. Flag Code.

Jeanette Rankin was the first woman to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. And she once tried to outlaw war.

The debate about the nature of Woodrow Wilson's health is intertwined with questions about his self-righteous character.

Mavis Staples' lyrics span from the civil-rights-era to today's societal issues.

What sparked one of the deadliest insurrections in American history?

Ronald Reagan is at the heart of the modern American politics of advertising, public relations, and a television in every home.

Bureaucracy used to work through patronage, an informal system of job-distribution by the party in power. Why did it change?

William Wrigley, Jr. started selling soap and became a prodigy of consumerism.

A Southern governor proclaimed April Confederate Heritage Month. Will slavery be mentioned?

What did Americans think of World War I before the US entered the conflict 100 years ago?

In the case of Chester Arthur, the story is one of surprising redemption.

Slave ownership was once as entrenched in American life as gun ownership.

The American dreams of Mark Lilla and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

A crucial new work of generational analysis explores how society turned millennials into human capital.

When industrial fertilizer replaced dung heaps, its spoils helped fund the spread of plastics.

What a forgotten commander in chief can teach Donald Trump.

But her memoir caused a rift with Mary Todd Lincoln.

Longtime tenant in the 165-year-old St. Denis building in New York City reflects on the building's history.

Selma and the unfulfilled promise of civil rights.

A new museum exhibit in Philadelphia showcases the first public health record of African Americans.

Author Jesmyn Ward on the racism “built into the bones” of the state where she grew up and is choosing to raise her children.

Why do white people love Black Panther, just as they love Star Wars?

How black freedom benefited poor whites.

The African roots of the Black Panther story.

This weekend is the anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s fateful decision to enter the 1968 presidential race. What if he hadn’t?