Topic: african american history

The author's family photos, and a picture of Jack Daniel (seen in the white hat) with Nearest Green’s son, George Green, to his immediate right. (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/Jack Daniel Distillery/Family photos courtesy of the author)

A family history, distilled

Yvette J. Green
Donald Trump; Frederick Douglass (AP/Wikimedia/Salon)

Frederick Douglass and the resistance

Chauncey DeVega
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington DC, August 28, 1963; Justice for Freddie Gray protest on April 29, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland (Hulton Archive/Andrew Burton)

Despair, justice and Black History Month

Chauncey DeVega
Donald Trump; Frederick Douglass (AP/Salon)

Frederick Douglass: Hope on the Fourth

Chauncey DeVega
Donald Trump and Kanye West (AP/Seth Wenig)

Can you love Kanye and hate Trump?

Chauncey DeVega
Details of broadsides advertising performances by Richard Potter and his mentor (Historic Northampton, Massachusetts/American Antiquarian Society)

America's first black celebrity

John A. Hodgson
Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker and Emayatzy Corinealdi in "Roots" (The History Channel)

Fact, fiction and "Roots"

Andrew O'Hehir

"Understanding Jim Crow"

Scott Timberg
Bill Cosby (AP/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

Jenny Kutner
Edward E. Baptist (DeDe Hatch)

Lies we tell about slavery

Michael Schulson

Brown's heroic slavery escape

Ezra Greenspan
Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Chiwetel Ejiofor in "12 Years a Slave" (Fox Searchlight)

Slavery and the shutdown

Andrew O'Hehir
Chiwetel Ejiofor in "12 Years a Slave"

Slavery wasn't like "Django"

Andrew O'Hehir
Jeffrey Wright in "Boardwalk Empire" (HBO)

Neil Drumming