Articles tagged as Slavery | Smithsonian Magazine

An ad looking for a woman named Fanny who escaped along with her daughter. The 7-year-old girl is described as a mulatto, which could suggest she is the daughter of the slaveowner seeking them out.

New Research

An Archive of Fugitive Slave Ads Sheds New Light on Lost Histories

Wanted ads posted by slave owners reveal details of life under slavery

May 25, 2016

Sarah Josepha Hale was the 19th century's answer to Oprah.

Cool Finds

Five Fascinating Details About the Media Mogul Who May Have Written ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’

Everywhere that Sarah Josepha Hale went, success was sure to go

May 24, 2016

The split in the Whig party over slavery spelled its doom.

History of Now

What Can the Collapse of the Whig Party Tell Us About Today’s Politics?

Is the Republican party on the verge of catastrophe? Probably not, if history is any indicator

April 12, 2016

Illustration of the New York slave market.

304 years ago today, a group of black slaves rose up against white colonists in New York

April 6, 2016

Inside America’s Auschwitz

A new museum offers a rebuke — and an antidote — to our sanitized history of slavery

April 4, 2016

Student protests upended another on-campus symbol of racism and forced labor

March 10, 2016

Breaking Ground

What Makes the Underground Railroad Such a Rich Opportunity for Storytelling

On television and in the new Smithsonian museum, the path to freedom comes alive

March 9, 2016

Cool Finds

Colonial America Depended on the Enslavement of Indigenous People

The role of enslaving Native Americans in early American history is often overlooked

January 29, 2016

Jesse J. Holland's book, "The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House" offers new insight into lives of these men and women who lived in bondage in the White House.

The Slaves of the White House Finally Get to Have Their Stories Told

Long ignored by historians, the enslaved people of the White House are coming into focus through a new book by Jesse J. Holland

January 25, 2016

A trial at the Destrehan Plantation sentenced 45 men from the uprising to death or to go to New Orleans for future trials.

More than 500 slaves fought for their freedom in this oft-overlooked rebellion

January 8, 2016

Illustration of the slave revolt in Haiti, and what slaveholders in the United States feared.

History of Now

The History of the United States’ First Refugee Crisis

Fleeing the Haitian revolution, whites and free blacks were viewed with suspicion by American slaveholders, including Thomas Jefferson

January 5, 2016

An 89 year-old Korean 'comfort woman' Kim Bok-Dong protests in front of the embassy of Japan in Berlin to demand an official apology from Japan in September, 2015.

Even with this agreement in place, many are still seeking a better resolution

December 28, 2015

Financed in part by the sale of 272 people, the school is grappling with its relationship to the institution of slavery

November 17, 2015

A coffle of slaves being marched from Virginia west into Tennessee, c. 1850.

Secrets of American History

Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears

America’s forgotten migration – the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South

November 2015

A suggestion to change our vocabulary when we talk about American History

A Proposal to Change the Words We Use When Talking About the Civil War

Historian Michael Landis writes that vocabulary like “compromise” or “Union” shape how we view our past

September 9, 2015

A woman waits to participate in the annual silleteros' parade.

A Parade of Bright Flowers in a City With a Dark Past

Farmers carried 500 dazzling flower designs through the streets of Medellín, Colombia

August 12, 2015

These tags were used to identify slaves before emancipation

The delayed enforcement of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation still didn’t bring freedom to many black Texans

June 19, 2015

“Table Bay Cape Town,” Table Bay in the 1790’s by Thomas Luny (1759-1837)

Breaking Ground

Smithsonian to Receive Artifacts From Sunken 18th-Century Slave Ship

In 1794, the Portuguese slave ship São José wrecked with 400 slaves aboard; iron ballast and a wooden pulley from that ship will come to Washington, D.C.

May 31, 2015

Trending Today

New York City Ran a Slave Market

New marker will acknowledge the bustling slave trade that helped build New York

April 14, 2015

A slave cabin at Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate in Virginia.

One of his slaves fled to New Hampshire to escape becoming a wedding present

February 16, 2015