Slavery in the United States

Tourists at the mingling with Stone Mountain and colorful trees in the background

Stone Mountain — home to the largest Confederate monument in the US — is celebrating its first Juneteenth

History

Officials say it will be a symbolic triumph on Saturday when Stone Mountain, Georgia, celebrates the holiday that marks the end of slavery in the US.

Demonstrators march through downtown Orlando, Florida, during a Juneteenth event, June 19, 2020.

Black Americans living in China find special meaning in local Juneteenth celebrations

Community
In this Sept. 1, 2016 file photo, a Jesuit statue is seen in front of Freedom Hall, formerly named Mulledy Hall, on the Georgetown University campus in Washington. 

‘Our goal is to heal’: Jesuits and descendants of the enslaved reflect on landmark agreement

Justice
A group of military men stand in a line with their weapons.

Analysis: Who joins rebel armies?

Critical State
boy

‘Willful amnesia’: How Africans forgot — and remembered — their role in the slave trade

castle

A professor with Ghanaian roots unearths a slave castle’s history — and her own

Rachel Engmann, a professor at Hampshire College, found her surname in a slave castle in Accra, Ghana, and decided to do some digging.

Joel Ripka and Naomi Lorrain in “Behind the Sheet.”

Behind ‘Behind the Sheet’

Arts

Imagining the women who paid the price for a medical breakthrough.

A couple is backlit against a stark stone fort interior.

Pirates brought enslaved Africans to Virginia’s shores. Where, exactly, is debatable.

This year marks 400 years since the first Africans were taken from Africa and sold as slaves in the English colonies. It was the largest migration in history: 12 million or more Africans forcibly moved to places across the Atlantic Ocean to be slaves. Today, all of those places are still dealing with the fallout.

Security forces charge demonstrators after being hit by water bo

Ferguson shows how America’s racial past haunts the nation’s present

Justice

Was the shooting of Michael Brown an isolated incident or another chapter in America’s history of racial division? The events in Ferguson have brought that question back to the front of national news, and some people think it needs to stay there.

The World

A culinary journey from Africa to America

It’s through food memories and techniques that Africans transformed the way Americans eat. Food historian Jessica Harris explores this part of the American story in her new book ‘High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America.’