Perhaps one of America’s most evocatively named places, the Great Dismal Swamp—which straddles the Virginia/North Carolina border—is mean as hell. But the snakes, bears, and the near-inaccessibility made it a refuge for escaped slaves and their descendants.

Last night, Bill O’Reilly did what he does so well: he doubled down on a stupid, trivial argument intended to make more people watch his television show. It, as it generally does, worked.

This October, there’ll be a new exhibit at the historical home of George Washington. Called Lives Bound Together, it focuses on Washington’s role as a slaveholder, as well as attempting to tell the stories of the slaves who lived and worked on the plantation.

On a Tuesday conference call with the Cruz campaign’s National Prayer Team, Heidi Cruz compared the change Ted Cruz would surely make in the United States to the abolition of slavery. But what has Cruz liberated us from, other than my own sexual desire???

In its early days, the school that would become Georgetown University was funded in part by plantations, and the institution might not even exist today if it weren’t for 272 slaves who were sold to pay off its debts.

Harvard has installed a plaque honoring four slaves who worked in the households of two university presidents in the 1700s and, more broadly, recognizing the school’s history with slavery.

Éirinn go Brách and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to my fellow children of the Emerald Isle! From oppression by the British to oppression in the United States to oppression on cereal boxes, we have endured a lot of painful history and that resilience is certainly worth celebrating. That being said, let’s separate the fact…

In Mississippi, Governor Phil Bryant has declared April as Confederate Heritage Month, and the last Monday in April as Confederate Heritage Day. Unfortunately, this is not an April Fool’s joke.

The Birth of a Nation, Nate Parker’s Sundance darling period piece about the deadliest slave insurrection in American history, was purchased by Fox Searchlight on early Tuesday morning for $17.5 million. It was the largest deal in Sundance history, and coverage immediately suggested that The Birth of a Nation will…

In tonight’s episode of the PBS show Finding Your Roots, Maya Rudolph breaks down crying when she learns that her family history traces back to a five-year-old slave who lived on a Kentucky plantation.

On January 5, Scholastic released A Birthday Cake For George Washington, written by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. On Sunday, January 17, the children’s publisher pulled the book for its sentimental depiction of slavery.

Because Virginians have always been on the right side of history when it comes to slavery.

The Queens District Attorney says a Flushing woman kept two children from Korea captive for more than five years, beginning when they were 9 and 11 years old. DNAInfo reports that Sook Yeong Park, 42, is suspected of bringing the children into the country, then beating them and treating them as virtual slaves.

Did you know that two Georgetown University presidents sold Jesuit-owned slaves in the 1830s to pay down the school’s debt? Now the institution is renaming two buildings memorializing these men because of their slavery ties.

During an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson compared abortion to slavery. After saying he was opposed to a person’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, Carson added, “During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they…

Educational publisher McGraw-Hill is updating one of their textbooks after a Texas-based mother and teacher publicly complained about a page that refers to slaves as “workers.”

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed legislation on Tuesday urging the city to build a memorial in remembrance of the approximately 200,000 women who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese army during World War II. The decision puts pressure on the city to take on the project, but does not actually…

In 2010, the Texas Board of Education approved a revised social studies curriculum that, wrote The New York Times that year, would “put a conservative stamp on history” once going into effect in 2015. In advance of their debut in Texas classrooms last week, it was widely reported that the new textbooks, published by…

Opinions are like assholes: especially repulsive in Iowa.

The Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based nonprofit that challenges racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, released a vivid retelling of America’s direct transition from slavery to mass incarceration.