Michelle Browder, installation view of The Mothers of Gynecology, found metal objects and other media, roughly 15 feet high at the More Up Campus, Montgomery, Alabama Artist Michelle Browder in her studio After learning about the “father of gynecology” J. Marion Sims’ place in history, visionary artist Michelle Browder is on a mission to make sure the enslaved women he experimented on without anesthesia or consent are honored as well. Inspiration for The Mothers of Gynecolo

Immortal Cells The “HeLa” cell line is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line in scientific research. They were used to test the first polio vaccine, instrumental in eradicating Polio. HeLa genes were some of the first ever mapped, which helped create the Human Genome Project – the discovery that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. This immortal cell line, so called because the cells never die, was the first ever cloned, used to create cancer medications, the

Image credit: Base of Statue of Liberty with broken chains at her feet; Liberty Island, New York Harbor When the statue was conceived in the aftermath of the American Civil War, its creator intended for Lady Liberty to hold broken chains in her hands, a clear representation of the end of slavery in the United States, begins the Black Untold video called The Chains and the Statue of Liberty. Sections of this blog post excerpt the video’s transcript. However, as the project p

Image Credit: Talat Hamdani at the 9/11 Memorial “My name is Talat Hamdani and I lived in Bayside when 9/11 happened,” begins a mother’s story filmed as part of NY 1’s “Remember September 11th: 25 Years, 25 Stories.” The content of this blog post is an auto-generated YouTube transcript from that interview. My son’s name is Mohammad Salman Hamdani. He was a cadet with the NYPD. I called my husband and he said, ‘Yes, the towers are falling and now the second tower is falling wh

Black congressman of Reconstruction, image credit: Mobituraries Podcast If you grew up in the United States, do you remember learning in primary or secondary school about a period directly after the Civil War in the mid-1800s when there were Black senators and congressmen in the House of Representatives such as the men posed in this blog’s headline image? You know, those pictures showing the abolition of slavery when newly freed enslaved Black people received land and more th

Image credit: The Bulwark, Tim Miller interviews Clint Smith Tim Miller interviews Clint Smith on The Bulwark podcast. Tim Miller: How are you processing where we’re at today and the backsliding we’ve done recently? There are probably going to be some Americans out there not contemplating deep historical weight of what’s happening and gleefully enjoying fireworks and hot dogs. My guess is if you’re listening to this podcast right now, you’re not one of those people. So, I’m

Image credit: Kettering Foundation This blog post excerpts the transcript of Alex Lovit interviewing Nikole Hannah-Jones in May 2026. Image credit: Kettering Foundation This interview is the conclusion of our three-part series called Democracy Under Construction. We’ve been commemorating America’s 250th by examining US history and asking where our patriotism should lie, who we should be lifting up as national heroes, and how history helps us find a path toward a more inclusiv

Image Credit: Young evacuees of Japanese ancestry await relocation at Turlock, California, May 2, 1942. LMU Magazine On Feb. 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. It authorized the incarceration (internment) of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. About 122,000 people were sent to concentration camps. With rare exceptions, many of their homes, businesses, and farms were confiscated by banks, local governments, and speculators. Image Credit:

At the 1936 Olympics, in Berlin, Germany, 18 African American’s challenged discrimination on the world stage. And won eight gold medals. It wasn’t only Jesse Owens, you ask? Nope. The American narrative of the 1936 Olympics is about one Black athlete named Jesse Owens. Like most narratives, there’s more to the story. ◊ ◊ ◊ The documentary, “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice explores the experiences of 18 African American Olympians who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitle

Image credit: New York Times In this short Opinion Documentary, what the New York Times, calls an “Op-Doc,” the media outlet asks, “What does it mean to be a Native American today?” ln their “latest installment of The Times’s Conversation on Race project, they set out to include as many perspectives on native identity as possible. And there are many perspectives.” “For this film, we spoke to dark-skinned and light-skinned individuals. Those whose ancestry ranges from one-si

What happens when America’s most fundamental values are put to the test? In Breaking the Deadlock: How to Fix an Election, moderator Aaron Tang (UC Davis School of Law) guides a diverse group of influential voices through an unfolding hypothetical crisis they’ve never seen before. What begins as a localized infrastructure threat quickly escalates, spilling into a high-stakes national moment involving an upcoming election, voting rights, and questions of national security. A

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: “We end today’s show with the words of the late historian Howard Zinn. We’re turning back now to 2009 when Howard Zinn appeared on Democracy Now, less than a year before he died. He’d just published A Young People’s History Of The United States. “I asked him to respond to a question he’d frequently been asked about his work: Is it right to be so critical of the government’s policies of the traditional heroes of the country?” Howard: It’s true t

Image credit: National Memorial of Peace and Justice dedicated to lynching, Equal Justice Initiative. The National Memorial documents the most active era of racial terror lynchings from 1877 to 1950 including Emmett Till. On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It is the first public reflection space to acknowledge the history of racial terror lynchings in America; the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of

Image credit: Legacy Museum Image credit: Equal Justice Initiative “When I moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s there were 59 monuments and memorials to the Confederacy,” says Bryan Stevenson. “You could not find the word slave slavery or enslavement anywhere in the city landscape. And the absence of any acknowledgment of that history bothered me. I saw it as a problem, but it wasn’t a priority then. It wasn’t a focus then. “I was focused on trying to get people who w

Image credit: Legacy Museum Image credit: Equal Justice Initiative Renowned human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, reflects on why efforts to erase or soften Black history are intensifying, how fear and false narratives have shaped American law and culture for generations, and why preserving historical truth is essential to the country’s future. Image credit: The Grio In the Grio interview excerpted in this blog

Image credit: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth124054/ “246 years. Nearly two and a half centuries. That is how long slavery lasted in what is now the United States of America,” wrote Isabel Wilkerson on Facebook in June 2026. “This is the day that we commemorate the moment that the last enslaved Americans were finally freed in the slavery stronghold of Texas on June 19, 1865. They had toiled for two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation and mon

Image credit: Robert Hrovat, Pixabay Humid, putrid garbage mountains piled on neighborhood street corners, in alleys. I’m glad I don’t live in it anymore; the too-muchness. Loud, clanging, screechy. Clouds and shadows behind Chrysler, and Empire State Buildings. The Brooklyn Bridge. Ol’ skool New York. The best street food around. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Anatomy of a Poem ◊ ◊ ◊

Image credit: Freya Norling, Fjord Cast “Should we have a little talk?” So begins Freyia, a Norse folklorist and mythologist. “Maybe you are tired because you have never finished a single death. Yes, I said that you have never finished a death. You have left too many versions of yourself half dead, half alive, trapped between worlds, still breathing, still attached. All those times you knew something was over and you didn’t bury it properly, that’s what’s leaking your ene

Image credit: The Elephant The first thing I do: Sneer smirk and all the rest. Too much damage to choose well. ◊ ◊ ◊ Anatomy of a Poem

Image credit: Time.com “Using the difficulty” is a present-moment opportunity to create-destroy-recreate. Here’s how that dynamic” played out in the making of the 2008 film, Rachel Getting Married, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Anne Hathaway. Demme: I wanted all of the music to happen in the moment. we actually did this thing that you’re not supposed to do; we played live music while the actors are saying their dialogue. Hathaway: I didn’t know the movie was being s