Videos

Professor William Harris talked about Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War Battle of Antietam, and the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.

Brandeis University professor Abigail Cooper taught a class on African Americans during the Reconstruction era, looking at how former slaves strove for economic rights and full citizenship,…

New York Historical Society & New School post-doctoral fellow Jonathan Lande talks about desertion among U.S. Colored Troops. His remarks are part of the annual summer conference hosted by…

Matthew Wasniewski and Farar Elliott used a selection of artifacts from their collections to tell the story of black members of congress between the 1920s and the 1970s. This program draws…

House of Representatives historian Matthew Wasniewski and House curator Farar Elliott discussed the history of African Americans who served in Congress during the late 19th century.

University of Washington historian Quintard Taylor explored slavery, the abolition movement, and Reconstruction in the West, focusing on Kansas and Missouri before and after the Civil War.…

Historian Kate Masur discussed They Knew Lincoln, a book written by John Washington and first published in 1942. It tells the stories of African Americans who knew and worked for President…

Colorado State University-Pueblo professor Matt Harris taught a class about the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War. He described some of the leaders of the movement including William Lloyd…

Erica Armstrong Dunbar recounted the life of Ona Judge, a slave owned by George and Martha Washington, whose escape initiated a manhunt ordered by the first President. Catherine Kerrison, explored the…

James Robenalt chronicled the unrest between police and black nationalists in Cleveland in 1968.

Eva Clayton served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1992 to 2003. She was the first African-American woman to represent North Carolina in Congress. Ms. Clayton talked…

Christa Dierksheide, Gardiner Hallock, and Steve Light showed some of the renovations taking place to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation was renovating the south wing of…

Spelman College history professor Charissa Threat looked at the different struggles that African American women and white men faced in breaking into the Army Nurse Corps.

Preservationist Jobie Hill gave a tour of the Brandon Plantation in southern Virginia and talked about her Saving Slave Houses project and the work of Trimble Inc. to create laser scans of…

Anne Spencer was a poet during the Harlem Renaissance period. Her granddaughter, Shaun Spencer-Hester, gave a tour of her grandmother’s home and told the story of how Anne Spencer brought the Harlem…

Johns Hopkins Ph.D. candidate Ayah Nurridin talked about the history of history African Americans and eugenics in this interview recorded at the American Historical Association annual…

Janet Dewart Bell provided a history of African American women in the Civil Rights Movement.

In Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory, author Karlos Hill examines the history of lynching in America, and how the response of African Americans evolved over time.…

General Edmund Pettus, the namesake for the bridge at the beginning of the route from Selma to Montgomery, was a Civil War General and two-term U.S. Senator from Alabama. John Giggie, University of Alabama…

During Reconstruction, African Americans in Winston-Salem settled in an area that became known as the Happy Hill neighborhood. Cheryl Harry, Organizer of the Happy Hill Shotgun House Project, explained her 30-year…