African-American GIs of WWII: Fighting for democracy abroad and at home

  Until the 21st century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in America’s collective memory of that war.

  The “tan soldiers,” as the Black press affectionately called them, were also for the most part left out of the triumphant narrative of America’s “Greatest Generation.” In order to tell their story of helping defeat Nazi Germany in my 2010 book, “A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany,” I had to conduct research in more than 40 different archives in the U.S. and Germany.

US citizenship was forced on Native Americans 100 years ago − its promise remains elusive

  The 100th anniversary of the Indian Citizenship Act has garnered little fanfare. Only a handful of news articles and events have commemorated the centennial of the law giving U.S. citizenship to Native Americans.

  Perhaps that’s unsurprising. The legislation has little relevance to most American citizens, and many Native Americans were dismayed when President Calvin Coolidge signed it into law in June 1924.

Back in the day, being woke meant being smart

  If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.

  As he promised in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

The forgotten story of Black soldiers and the Red Ball Express during World War II

  Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had a problem. In June 1944, Allied forces had landed on Normandy Beach in France and were moving east toward Nazi Germany at a clip of sometimes 75 miles (121 kilometers) per day.

  With most of the French rail system in ruins, the Allies had to find a way to transport supplies to the advancing soldiers.

The brutal trade in enslaved people within the US has been largely whitewashed out of history

  For my recently published book, “The Ledger and the Chain,” I visited more than 30 archives in over a dozen states, from Louisiana to Connecticut. Along the way, I uncovered mountains of material that exposed the depravity of the men who ran the largest domestic slave trading operation in American history and revealed the fortitude of the enslaved people they trafficked as merchandise.

  But I also learned that many Americans do not realize that a domestic slave trade existed in the U.S. at all.