Martin Luther King Jr. saw something essential about our nation: Imperial expansion west over stolen Indian land shaped and deepened the American Revolution’s relationship to slavery.
Charting the ironies of freedom won and lost during and after the Civil War, the American historian has also helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.
Since 2011, Tamara Lanier has been battling the university over the ownership of daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors. Her fight tells us a lot about the racist roots of American science and the need for reparations.