Slavery Abolition

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. Denzel Washington as Malcolm X. Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. So many historical figures instantly evoke famous faces who’ve played them on the big screen. But where’s our Harriet Tubman? For one of our country’s most…

Sidney Blumenthal is the acclaimed author of A Self-Made Man, Wrestling with His Angel, and All the Powers of the Earth, the first three volumes in his five-volume biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. He is the former assistant and senior adviser…

Abraham Lincoln doesnt make much of an appearance in Sidney Blumenthals All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume III, 1856-1860 until around page 180, entering his own story almost as if through a side door. Then, with rapidly ga…

In 1951, as the Cold War ramped up and American soldiers died in a bloody hot war in Korea that began when communist North Korea invaded non-Communist, pro-America South Korea, Hollywood released a movie called The Day the Earth Stood Still. Its plot involve…

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. Beside presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow W…

A newly uncovered speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in 1967 sounds curiously like the civil rights icon is speaking about current-day conditions as he preaches about underfunded schools, the wage gap, white backlash against black progress and the…

It’s been almost a year since Cynthia Erivo first stepped into Harriet Tubman’s shoes in Harriet—a biopic about the historical heroine who escaped slavery and freed hundreds of slaves via the Underground Railroad. And it’s almost a year, too, since Erivo firs…

Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters This year marks 400 years since enslaved Africans from Angola were forcibly brought to Jamestown, Virginia. This forced migration of black bodies on to what would become the United States of America represents the intertwine…

Turchin has some great stories about unity vs. polarization over time. For example in the 1940s, unity became such a “problem” that concerned citizens demanded more partisanship: Concerned about electoral torpor and meaningless political debate, the American…

Samuel "Sam" Houston (March 2, 1793 – July 26, 1863) was an American politician and soldier, best known for his role in bringing Texas into the United States as a constituent state. His victory at the Battle of San Jacinto secured the independence of Texas fr…