Slavery

An 18th-century engraving depicting cross sections of a ship used to transport enslaved people from Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean

New Research Reveals the Transatlantic Slave Trade's Genetic Legacy

Scientists investigated whether genetic data collected from 50,000 volunteers lined up with historical shipping manifests

Pierre Charles L'Enfant's Plan for Washington D.C., as revised by Andrew Ellicott. Engraved by Thackara and Vallance sc.

The Notorious 'Yellow House' That Made Washington, D.C. a Slavery Capital

Located right off the National Mall, the jail lent institutional support to slavery throughout the South

Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum that features a recreation of Plymouth's 17th-century English village and a Wampanoag homesite.

Massachusetts' Plimoth Plantation Will Change Its Name

The new moniker will incorporate the Mashpee Wampanoag name for the region: Patuxet

Lucretia Mott’s signature Quaker bonnet—hand-sewn green silk with a stiff cotton brim—from the collection of the National Museum of American History.

What Made Lucretia Mott One of the Fiercest Opponents of Slavery and Sexism

Her humble Quaker upbringing taught her how to stand up for her beliefs

Shannon LaNier, a TV news anchor, has complex feelings about being descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. “He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn’t practice it. He owned people. And now I’m here because of it.”

These Portraits Revisit the Legacies of Famous Americans

Photographer Drew Gardner painstakingly recreates the images with the notable figures' descendants

Now behind fences erected by the police, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park has been criticized ever since its dedication.

What Frederick Douglass Had to Say About Monuments

In a newly discovered letter, the famed abolitionist wrote that ‘no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth'

A man passes by graffiti on the side of the slave quarters of Decatur House in Washington, D.C.

What the Protesters Tagging Historic Sites Get Right About the Past

Places of memory up and down the East Coast also witnessed acts of resistance and oppression

A 1967 funeral program for Mrs. Julia Burton

New Digital Archive Explores 133 Years of African American Funeral Programs

The online resource offers a veritable treasure trove of information for historians and genealogists

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book and the first American woman to earn a living from her writing. This frontispiece engraving is held in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

The Multiple Truths in the Works of the Enslaved Poet Phillis Wheatley

In this endearing homage, poet-scholar drea brown finds ancestral and personal healing

The Washington Family, painted by Edward Savage in New York City while Washington was the nation's president. The children in the portrait are Martha Custis Washington's grandchildren, to whom George was a father figure.

The Father of the Nation, George Washington Was Also a Doting Dad to His Family

Though he had no biological children, the first president acted as a father figure to Martha's descendants

Written in ornate cursive by a general’s aide and signed by Maj. F.W. Emery on behalf of Granger, “General Orders No. 3” had long been hidden in a book of formal orders housed at the archives.

National Archives Locates Handwritten Juneteenth Order

On June 19, 1865, the decree informed the people of Texas that enslaved individuals were now free

Over 800 corten-steel monuments, one for each county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took place, on display at the National Memorial For Peace And Justice

Nearly 2,000 Black Americans Were Lynched During Reconstruction

A new report brings the number of victims of racial terror killings between 1865 and 1950 to almost 6,500

A display in Paris' Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, which houses hundreds of thousands of artifacts from non-European cultures

Activists Try to Remove African Artifact From Paris Museum

Protesters demanding the repatriation of looted objects seized a funeral pole on view at the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac

The planned memorial to victims of slavery will be located in the Tuileries Gardens in the center of Paris.

France Seeks Proposals for Memorial to Victims of Slavery

Currently, Paris is home to just one significant monument recognizing the country's history of enslavement

Juneteenth celebration in 1900 at Eastwoods Park

Juneteenth: Our Other Independence Day

Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, American slavery came to an end and a celebration of freedom was born

Irene Triplett's father, Mose, ran away from a Confederate military hospital days before the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg.

The Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension Dies at Age 90

Irene Triplett, whose father defected from the Confederate Army and enlisted with the Union, collected $73.13 a month

When the Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, first saw the new image of Harriet Tubman (above, detail), she said: "She's young!"

Why Harriet Tubman’s Heroic Military Career Is Now Easier to Envision

The strong, youthful visage of the famed underground railroad conductor is the subject of the Portrait Gallery’s podcast “Portraits”

The men's remains, found in a 16th-century mass grave in Mexico City, bear signs of trauma and disease.

New Analysis Suggests These Three Men Were Among the First Africans Enslaved in the Americas

Buried in a mass grave in Mexico City, the trio may have been part of the first generation abducted from their homeland and brought to the New World

The Stenton House, circa 1865 to 1914

Philadelphia Will Memorialize Dinah, an Enslaved Woman Who Saved the City's Historic Stenton House in 1777

Currently in the works, the new monument will honor her contributions and legacy with a contemplative space

Matilda McCrear died in 1940 at the age of 81 or 82.

Researcher Identifies the Last Known Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Matilda McCrear was just 2 when she was captured and brought to Alabama on the "Clotilda"

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