Celebrity Life

The “Six Triple Eight” was the only Black WAC unit to be deployed—and faced an impossible-seeming task

In an excerpt from the new installment of John Lewis' graphic-novel memoir, the late Congressman grapples with a changing civil rights movement

While Republicans lately have been attacking Democrats for plotting to “pack” the federal courts with like-minded judges, their party has been doing it for years. Through bare-knuckle tactics in the Senate, an animated base of voters and an institutionalized and well-funded pipeline for judges, Republicans have stocked the federal bench at all levels with conservatives…

The history of medicine, of illness, is every bit as social and cultural as it is scientific. It is a history of people, of their bodies and their lives, not just of physicians, surgeons, clinicians and researchers

As the U.S. entered WWI, the Ringling show employed about a thousand people—but forces that would reshape the circus industry had begun to emerge

Following the terror attacks that took place Sept. 11, 2001, people across the country began searching Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary for the same word. The word was not “rubble,” or “triage,” or even “terrorism,” but “surreal.” And they did the same thing again after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. And again, after the…

Having your temperature taken is a regular feature of life amid COVID-19. Here’s the origin story of the tool that’s had us all on edge

On June 7, North Carolina attorney general Josh Stein will enter a Durham courtroom with a mission: proving that the e-cigarette company Juul Labs purposely targeted teenagers with its nicotine-rich products. If Stein—who in 2019 became the first state attorney general in the U.S. to sue Juul—is successful, the vaping company may be in for…

How newspapers and written constitutions brought us "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

Between the 1820s and the 1830s, the number of slaves transported across state lines increased by 85%, reaching the point where white people forced the migration of nearly thirty thousand enslaved people, on average, from one state to another every year

Sometimes when my daughter Caitlin was growing up, images and ideas would sneak into my head before I could squeeze them away. What a headstone might say. The Freddie Mercury music that would accompany a heartbreakingly beautiful video of her life at a memorial service. When she reached adulthood and her quality of life began…

When I wrote my first movie script 10 years ago with a close friend, he and I argued about whether or not the main characters should be Black. I believed then that we wouldn’t be able to sell a movie with Black protagonists. Things are different now. In the past few years, while publishers, film…