By the year 1987, the AIDS epidemic had reached grim proportions. The disease had killed almost 60,000 people worldwide, and more than 40,000 were HIV-positive in the United States alone. The majority of those ravaged by the disease were gay men. Despite mounting cases and ...read more

As decades go, the 1980s had more than its share of iconic technology, from Walkmen to VCRs to pagers. Most innovative gadgets and entertainment devices of the Reagan era have since become obsolete, but they paved the way for a new generation of 21st-century items such as cell ...read more

Despite the horrors of slavery, it was no easy decision to flee. Escaping often involved leaving behind family and heading into the complete unknown, where harsh weather and lack of food might await. Then there was the constant threat of capture. So-called slave catchers and ...read more

They called her “Moses” for leading enslaved people in the South to freedom up North. But Harriet Tubman fought the institution of slavery well beyond her role as a conductor for the Underground Railroad. As a soldier and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War, Tubman became ...read more

During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass used his stature as the most prominent African American social reformer, orator, writer and abolitionist to recruit men of his race to volunteer for the Union army. In his “Men of Color to Arms! Now or Never!” broadside, Douglass called on ...read more

As America’s Civil War raged, with the enslavement of millions of people hanging in the balance, African Americans didn’t just sit on the sidelines. Whether enslaved, escaped or born free, many sought to actively affect the outcome. From fighting on bloody battlefields to ...read more

By the time he made it to a Union encampment in Baton Rouge in March 1863, Peter had been through hell. Bloodhounds had chased him. He had been pursued for miles, had run barefoot through creeks and across fields. He had survived, if barely. When he reached the soldiers, Peter’s ...read more

Throughout human history, children have played with and cared for dolls. Miniature facsimiles of human beings have been found around the globe from all periods of history, using all kinds of materials. They range from carved wooden paddle dolls discovered in ancient Egyptian ...read more

For generations, the dominant cultural narrative of America’s Thanksgiving holiday has told how a Native American man named Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to get food after they arrived on the Mayflower in Massachusetts in 1620. Having fled their native England, the new émigrés ...read more

Just three decades after the United States broke free from Great Britain with the American Revolution, the two nations once again went to battle in the War of 1812. But this time, the combatants with the most at stake were arguably a third group: Native Americans. At the time the ...read more

The facts about Napoleon Bonaparte’s life— his awesome military achievements against the united powers of Europe, his sweeping reforms of law and bureaucracy across an entire continent—are extraordinary. But Napoleon Bonaparte's final years were just as extraordinary, with ...read more

In the late 19th century, the European powers ran roughshod over Africa, brutally colonizing one country after another. Italy, for its part, targeted Ethiopia. But when its troops attacked on March 1, 1896, near the town of Adwa, they were overpowered by a large and well-armed ...read more