How do you navigate life's growing number of transitions with meaning, purpose and skill? Writer Bruce Feiler offers a powerful way to handle uncertain, painful and confusing times -- or "lifequakes", as he calls them. Learn how to equip...

In which John Green teaches you about America's "peculiar institution," slavery. I wouldn't really call it peculiar. I'd lean more toward horrifying and depressing institution, but nobody asked me. John will talk about what life was like...

Ida B. Wells was an investigative journalist, civil rights leader, and anti-lynching advocate who fought for equality and justice. -- In the late 1800’s, lynchings were happening all over the American South, often without any...

Straddling Virginia and North Carolina is an area that was once described as the "most repulsive of American possessions." By 1728, it was known as the Great Dismal Swamp. But while many deemed it uninhabitable, recent findings suggest...

Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori, a Fula prince and former slave, was determined to free his family. His extraordinary story and character caught America's attention at a complicated time in American history.

Mr. Beat finally tackles the complicated story of the Southern Strategy and the Party Switch...aka The Big Switch...aka The Big Lie. Wait, the Big Lie? Some people think it's made up? Really?

UCSD Prof. of Chinese Studies Karl Gerth describes how the West should set a better example in a number of key public policy areas in its dealings with China, and how a close examination of China can help us improve as well.

When the women of Richmond, Virginia couldn’t afford to buy bread during the American Civil War, they incited the largest civil disturbance the Confederacy had ever seen.

Abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass believed that the U.S. could become the greatest nation in history – if it accepted the defining principles set out in his speech, Composite Nation.

When Black residents moved into one neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, White supremacists unleashed a wave of terror against the community.

For many poor White families in the Antebellum South, slavery did not pay – so why did the ruling elite erase their narrative from the history books?

Classical violinist Joseph Henry Douglass helped empower the Black community through music and education at a time when Southern lawmakers were pushing back against the progress of Reconstruction.

The Atlantic colonial world is full of resistance to the brutal enslavement and displacement of BIPOC. Often escaping oppression meant forging pockets of resistance to live and fight for their freedom. These people are known as maroons,...

Politics in the United States tend to be dominated by the two major parties, with third parties rarely playing a major role. So in this video, we explain who the biggest other parties are, what they stand for and why they struggle to...

Investigative journalist Ida B. Wells made it her mission to exposing the horrors of racism in the American South, but it wasn't easy.

In 1963, school children from Birmingham, Alabama skipped class to demonstrate for racial equality. Met with police violence, they helped to bring about significant change. The Birmingham Children's Crusade, as it was known, has gone...

It mechanised cotton production by separating cotton from seeds – but increased the demand for slave labor. Discover how the cotton gin changed 18th century American society.