When we think of California, we might think about sunny weather, Hollywood, beaches, wine country, and perhaps the Gold Rush. What we don’t usually think about when we think about California is the state’s long history of slavery. Jean Pfaelzer, a...
In this special Juneteenth episode, as we honor the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, we will delve into the work of those working to preserve slave dwellings across the United States, safeguarding the essential stories these structures...
The United States Constitution of 1787 gave many Americans pause about the powers that the new federal government could exercise and how the government's leadership would rest with one person, the president. The fact that George Washington would...
The vast and varied landscapes of Texas loom large in our American imaginations. As does Texas culture with its BBQ, cowboys, and larger-than-life personality. But before Texas was a place that embraced ranching, space flight, and country music...
Long before European arrival in the Americas, Indigenous people and nations practiced enslavement. Their version of enslavement looked different from the version Christopher Columbus and his fellow Europeans practiced, but Indigenous slavery also...
The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North...
Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19 because, on June 19, 1865, United States General Gordon Granger issued his...
African chattel slavery, the predominant type of slavery practiced in colonial North America and the early United States, did not represent one monolithic practice of slavery. Practices of slavery varied by region, labor systems, legal codes, and...
What did it take to stage a successful slave uprising? Over the course of the early republic, we see a few violent slave uprisings in the United States. A particularly brutal rebellion took place in Louisiana in January 1811. Another violent...
What do we know about the American Revolution? Why is it important that we see the Revolution as a political event, a war, a time of social and economic reform, and as a time oviolence and upheaval? Woody Holton, a Professor of History at the...