Slavery

On the labor issues connected with using inmates as extremely low-paid workers in state and federal prisons.

• By Beth Schwartzapfel

Este artículo explica los problemas laborales relacionados con el uso de presos como trabajadores extremadamente mal pagados en las prisiones estatales y federales.

• By Beth Schwartzapfel

Historian Liam Hogan has spent the last six years debunking the Irish slave myth.

• By David M. Perry

Setting the record straight on the abolitionist's 200th birthday.

• By William Cheng

From pirates to abolitionist dwarves, Marcus Rediker's research tends to unearth radical and oppositional communities.

• By Oliver Lee Bateman

By minimizing how we talk about slavery, we ignore its profound impact on the development of the American economy.

• By Tasha Williams

Widespread sexual exploitation before the Civil War strongly influenced the genetic make-up of essentially all African Americans alive today.

• By Michael White

Not the slavery you learned about in high school.

• By Peter C. Baker

In 'The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry,' Ned and Constance Sublette offer a radical re-interpretation of American history. It’s brutal and uncompromising, and, for better or worse, it’s how we should understand the country.

• By Malcolm Harris

The racial empathy gap, then and now.

• By Lisa Wade

Race is more social than biological.

• By Lisa Wade

Could the brutality of slavery still have an effect on the health of African Americans, who continue to live shorter lives, on average, than whites?

• By Avery August

A pair of economists seek to reconcile two conflicting schools of thought in order to predict what sort of environments increase incentives for labor coercion.

• By Greg Rosalsky

Two European researchers find a link between county-level slavery in 1860 and economic inequality today.

• By Tom Jacobs

As part of its reparations demands, the Caribbean Community is seeking money for cultural organizations that examine the history of slavery. Here’s why the U.S. should construct similar institutions to memorialize our peculiar institution.

• By Sara Fanning

Human trafficking isn’t a relic of history.

• By Lauren Kirchner

Brutalism on screen—and its moral repercussions.

• By Ted Scheinman

At its essence, American food began as a cuisine of survival free from the burdens of tradition and elitism. Little has changed.

• By James McWilliams

As you watch 12 Years a Slave recall that the market in humanity really was a market—with dizzying asset price changes, speculative bubbles, and a fear of volatility greater than a fear of civil war.

• By Michael Todd

Do most Americans believe that all problems—psychological, interpersonal, political, moral—can be resolved by a final competition, whether it’s a quick-draw shootout or a dance contest?

• By Jay Livingston

The bias of Southern whites during slavery is still being passed down from generation to generation, according to new research.

• By Lisa Wade

No, you don't, but it happened well into his presidency. Aaron Gordon speaks to the man who has tried to paint a true, human portrait of the Great Emancipator—even if we don't want to hear it.

• By Aaron Gordon

Concrete concerns about saving and expanding slavery, and not the nebulous theology of states’ rights, ignited the U.S. Civil War. Why does that message keep getting lost?

• By Emily Badger