Slavery
Page-Turner
When Preachers Were Rock Stars
A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.
The Front Row
Med Hondo’s Vital Political Cinema Comes to New York
The Mauritanian filmmaker, long active in France, reveals the legacy of colonialism in society at large and in the art of movies.
Annals of Inquiry
Searching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery
Its ruins are somewhere in the swamps of Georgia. What will it take to find them?
Under Review
Confronting Georgetown’s History of Enslavement
In “The 272,” Rachel L. Swarns sets out how the country’s first Catholic university profited from the sale of enslaved people.
Dispatch
The Black Families Seeking Reparations in California’s Gold Country
Descendants of enslaved people want land seized by the state returned and recognition of the gold rush’s rich, and largely ignored, Black history.
On Television
Hulu’s Fascinating and Incomplete “1619 Project”
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s documentary series offers a damning portrait of American racism, but its emphasis on the past at times obscures the complexity of the present.
Cultural Comment
Qatar’s Tarnished World Cup
I broke the story of how Qatar bribed its way to hosting the World Cup. Now that the tournament has arrived, the country and FIFA are rightly facing a harsh spotlight.
Second Read
The Enduring Power of “Scenes of Subjection”
Saidiya Hartman’s unrelenting exploration of slavery and freedom in the United States first appeared in 1997, during the last period of spoiled “race relations” in the twentieth century. Twenty-five years later, it has lost none of its relevance.
Culture Desk
Reckoning with the Slave Ship Clotilda
A new documentary tells the story of the last known slave ship to enter the United States and takes on the difficult question of how to memorialize America’s history of racial violence.
Cultural Comment
Sisterhood and Slavery in “The Woman King”
Viola Davis’s new feature is a rousing tribute to the world’s only all-female army. But how true is the story it tells?
Cultural Comment
A Visionary Show Moves Black History Beyond Borders
“Afro-Atlantic Histories,” now at the National Gallery of Art, offers an epic survey of the diaspora.
American Chronicles
Did George Washington Have an Enslaved Son?
West Ford’s descendants want to prove his parentage—and save the freedmen’s village he founded.
The New Yorker Interview
The Historian Scrutinizing Our Idea of Monuments
For Erin L. Thompson, destroying monuments is “a normal part of human life.” Why has it become so divisive?
Under Review
The 1619 Project and the Demands of Public History
The ambitious Times endeavor, now in book form, reveals the difficulties that greet a journalistic project when it aspires to shift a founding narrative of the past.
Cultural Comment
How Cities in the American North Can Reckon with Their Monuments
There are no statues honoring the Confederacy to be found in Boston or Cambridge, but there are plenty of historic memorials that obscure the achievements of Black Americans.
American Chronicles
When Black History Is Unearthed, Who Gets to Speak for the Dead?
Efforts to rescue African American burial grounds and remains have exposed deep conflicts over inheritance and representation.
A Reporter at Large
Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History
Great estates are among the country’s treasures. But their connections to slavery and colonialism are forcing visitors to reckon with myths they may not want to abandon.
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Commemorating Juneteenth
From the magazine’s archive: a selection of pieces about racial injustice and the abiding legacy of slavery.
On Television
The Achievement of Barry Jenkins’s “The Underground Railroad”
We have known Jenkins as a portraitist. In his reimagining of Colson Whitehead’s novel, he is a virtuosic landscape artist.