history

For this week’s column, we decided to address an option for going forward when you have taken your family tree research efforts as far as you can take them on your own. How Do You Find a Professional Genealogist You Can Trust? Maybe you’ve hit a wall in tracing an elusive ancestor, or you’ve received…

This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Within the arched compartments of a late-Gothic Spanish altarpiece, a momentous conversation takes place between a Middle Eastern sultan and…

I started my career in public education in 1965—the same year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law. Baltimore had hired more than 600 paraprofessionals using city funds, and I was one of them. I worked in a kindergarten class and a first-grade class at Mount Royal Elementary School in…

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Aug. 1, 2014. I am very much a “white” person, with no family oral history to suggest otherwise (except the obligatory Native American-ancestor stories, which don’t pan out). However, when I had a test done for myself by Ancestry DNA, my results came back with around 1…

The myth of black Confederates is arguably the most controversial subject of the Civil War. Over the past four years, the debate over whether or not blacks fought for the Confederacy has been the most discussed topic on Civil War Memory, a popular website attracting teachers and scholars from around the world, and the Atlantic…

This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. The ancient Near Eastern empire of Assyria is commonly known to history as a power unswervingly committed to savagery, with…

Editor’s note: We’ll be featuring a quote from the iconic civil rights leader every day until Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. Read more about Martin Luther King Jr.’s revolutionary spirit here.

Editor’s note: We’ll be featuring a quote from the iconic civil rights leader every day until Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. Read about an effort to portray Martin Luther King Jr. authentically on-screen here.

Editor’s note: We’ll be featuring a quote from the iconic civil rights leader every day until Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. Read more of The Root’s coverage of police brutality here.

Editor’s note: We’ll be featuring a quote from the iconic civil rights leader every day until Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. Read the entire “I Have a Dream” speech here.