Were U.S. slaves in any way responsible for their own misery? Were there any silver linings to forced bondage? These questions surface from time to time in the American cultural conversation, rekindling a longstanding debate over whether the nation’s “peculiar institution” may ...read more

Early in the evening on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, a single bullet felled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 39-year-old leader of America’s long-simmering civil-rights struggle. Known for his advocacy of nonviolent resistance to ...read more

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham…your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds ...read more