February 28, 2024

Lucy Diggs Slowe on Black Women, the Role of the University, and Democracy

Amy Yeboah Quarkume

Lucy Diggs Slowe (1885–1937) was one of the most remarkable and accomplished figures in Black women’s higher education. Her story is one of resilience, activism, and relentless determination to overcome barriers. She defied societal limitations to become a pioneering educator...

February 26, 2024

Sandhya Shukla on Cross-Cultural Harlem: Reimagining Race and Place

Cross-Cultural Harlem: Reimagining Race and Place, proposes an understanding of Harlem as a place where peoples of different backgrounds collide, interact, and borrow from each other—and cross the borders of ethnic and racial identities and community enclaves in the process....

February 21, 2024

Q&A: Najha Zigbi-Johnson on Mapping Malcolm

Mapping Malcolm is a collection of essays, conversations, and works of art that reinscribes Malcolm X’s memory and legacy across the built environment, forms of contemporary community building, and Black freedom movements as they continue to manifest across New York...

February 14, 2024

Beyond the Famous Few:

Five Women Who Shaped Black History and Literature

Courtney Thorsson

One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan’s Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves “The Sisterhood,” the group—which...

February 9, 2024

15 Must-Read Books for Black History Month 2024

This month, we come together to celebrate the achievements of African Americans and to recognize their roles in shaping U.S. history and culture. This year, we invite you on a journey of discovery through these rich narratives and scholarly works....

February 7, 2024

Black Life in a Nazi Internment Camp:

The Art of Josef Nassy

Sarah Phillips Casteel

In July 1947, an exhibition of artworks created in Nazi concentration and internment camps was mounted in railway cars stationed in Brussels’s Gare du Nord. Included in the exhibition were several works by Josef Nassy, an artist from the Dutch...

February 1, 2024

Behind the Lines:

How Plagiarism Popularized the Harlem Renaissance

Adam McKible

The Harlem Renaissance made an early splash with millions of Americans through a blatant act of plagiarism. In March 1925, Alain Locke announced the flourishing of the New Negro in Harlem by guest editing “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,”...

January 30, 2024

Three Myths About Presidential Campaign Visits:

From Joe Biden’s Basement to Donald Trump’s Rallies

Christopher J. Devine

Did Joe Biden spend the 2020 campaign hiding in his basement? Did Hillary Clinton cost herself the 2016 election by not bothering to visit Wisconsin? Did Donald Trump’s rallies fire up his base and win him the presidency? To many...

January 23, 2024

Kimberly D. Acquaviva on The Handbook of LGBTQIA-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care

A year and a half after she published her first book about LGBTQIA-inclusive hospice and palliative care in 2017, Kimberly D. Acquaviva learned that her wife Kathy had ovarian cancer. When they were unable to find a local hospice with...

January 15, 2024

Israel, Palestine, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Legacy

Roger Baumann

In mid-January each year, many Americans turn their attention to questions about the legacy of the historic civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s in the United States. This annual period of national introspection focuses especially on Martin Luther...

January 2, 2024

California’s Conservatorships:

Why Britney Spears and Not the Most Vulnerable

Alex V. Barnard

As estimated 1.3 million Americans are living under conservatorships (also known as guardianships): legal arrangements by which a judge takes decision-making power away from a person with disabilities and gives it to a third party. A conservator then determines where...

December 27, 2023

Chick-fil-A in the Early Nineteenth Century

Joseph P. Slaughter

The fall semester is wrapping up at Wesleyan University, which includes my fall course Jesus Chicken—a class that explores the intersection of religion and business in America. For those unfamiliar, the course’s title refers to Chick-fil-A—a derisive moniker given to...