In the rolling hills just outside Washington, D.C., a small fort once stood watch over a community few remember today. Freedom Hill, a settlement of free Black families in Fairfax County, was born out of the manumission economy and thrived within a day’s ride of the capital. Its residents lived in the shadow of powerful [...]
Dr Nell Irvin Painter
In the mid-1990s, a new biography of Sojourner Truth hit the shelves. It didn’t just recount the abolitionist’s life—it reframed her entirely. Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol became the definitive work on one of America’s most important figures, and its author, Dr. Nell Irvin Painter, was already well on her way to reshaping how [...]
Dorothy Porter Wesley and the Fight to Preserve Black History
How a woman born in rural Virginia built one of the world’s greatest African American research collections. Born in Warrenton, Virginia in 1905, Dorothy Porter Wesley would become one of the most influential figures in African American librarianship. As curator of Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, she transformed a modest collection into one of the [...]
The Black Cabinet and Mary McLeod Bethune
The room fell quiet as Eleanor Roosevelt stepped away from the podium. She had just finished speaking at a Commerce Department meeting on Black education. Her words promised change—change that many in the room doubted they’d ever see. And then, without hesitation, the First Lady crossed the floor. Every eye followed her as she stopped [...]
Lear Green: Freedom in a Wooden Crate
The crate was small, just big enough for one young woman to curl inside. For fifteen hours it rocked in the dark belly of a ship leaving Baltimore, carrying not cargo but a life—and a gamble for freedom. Inside was Lear Green. Baltimore’s Inner Harbor at night. In 1857, these docks were the starting point [...]
Carrie Williams Clifford, a Poet and Activist
Carrie Williams Clifford’s poetry cut straight to the heart of America’s inequalities—speaking from the lived perspectives of both racism and sexism. Her first book of poems was dedicated to her mother, her second to Black Americans. She called for action through her verse, urging readers to “change some evil heart, right some wrong, and raise [...]
America’s Leadership and the Fight for Freedom at Home
1 In the years before World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to position the United States as the leader of the “Free World.” At the time, two political paths stood in stark contrast: authoritarianism, which served the interests of a select few, and liberal democracy, which promised rights and opportunities to the many. This [...]
American Pulp Culture 