Despite well-deserved criticism from the left of some of their policies, Mr. Obama and Ms. Harris represent the cosmopolitan, interracial democracy that a majority of Americans aspire to live in today.
The 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington showed the strength of the movement for suffrage but also the deep racial divisions that would continue to affect women's political activity.
Now that Joe Biden has announced Senator Kamala Harris will be his running mate, readers can decide how well the pick meets Michael Beschloss's criteria for a beneficial choice.
World War II-era campaigns against prostitution in New York City show that enacting public health controls through the police department results in racially unequal enforcement and increased policing of communities of color.
The history of social unrest like the 1965 Watts Rebellion must acknowledge that public authorities had ignored peaceful demands for inclusion and opportunity from communities of color for years before the unrest.
While athletes’ collegiate activism in the 1960s and 1970s produced limited wins, today’s movement echoes many of the still-unanswered demands of that time.
by Elizabeth A. Nelson, Emily S. Beckman, and Modupe Labode
Therapist Lisa Freeman bucked the authorities of an Indiana psychiatric hospital to advocate for the right of residents to have consensual sex and sex education. Her work shows the ways that paternalistic values are embedded in state treatment of people with disabilities.
With “Crazy Blues,” Mamie Smith opened the door to a surge of powerfully voiced female singers who defied the conventions of singerly gentility to make the blues a popular phenomenon in the 1920s.
As we look to history for lessons in early 2020, we need to think broadly about how understanding the complexity of the past can inform decisions in the present and the future.
Counterfactual scenarios have a tremendous allure for historians at idle times, as does speculating about what historians will remember about the present. A noted historian of American religion has some thoughts on both topics.
Today’s child-care crisis may have been fueled by the outbreak, but it is not new. It has been simmering below the surface for decades and can be traced back to President Richard M. Nixon’s 1971 veto of federally funded universal child care.
The experiences of convicted women who were "resurrected" after being unsuccessfully hanged illuminate the precarious legal and social standing of women in early modern England.
The slaveholders’ attempts to perpetuate their system backfired; in the years before the Civil War, the inhumanity and cruelty of enslavement became too blatant for northerners to ignore or deny.
We might well ask whether Peter Faneuil actually paid for the building or whether it was purchased by the lives and freedom of those he transported and sold.
