Modern gynecology was borne of experimentation of enslaved Black women, historian Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens explains

As the U.S. Treasury considers putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill to honor her role in the northbound underground railroad, new attention is being paid to the often overlooked southbound route.

The move draws sharp criticism from tribal legislators who say the court exceeded its authority by changing the constitution itself without a vote of the Cherokee people.

A 1963 protest placard in the Smithsonian collections could almost be mistaken for any of the Black Lives Matter marches of today

The first memorial dedicated solely to the African-American troops who fought for the Union.

Clarence Jones, the galvanizing lawyer who was Martin Luther King Jr.’s trusted lieutenant between 1960 and 1968, has come out from the shadows of civil-rights history. In 2006, he shared his untold tale with Douglas Brinkley: the secret missions, the F.B.I. wiretaps, and the “real” Martin of those perilous, passionate years.

New Bedford was a wealthy whaling town with a large abolitionist community, but one where many black citizens toiled in poverty. With such conditions likely in mind, James Henry Gooding believed that military service provided the key to African-American advancement.

Frederick Douglass spent much of his life speaking about the hardships of slavery — but even he, at times, realized that words were not enough. Instead, he turned to music

Panelists talk about the opportunities and challenges for the African-American community in the South and the West during Reconstruction.

Du Bois’s charts focus on Georgia, tracing the routes of the slave trade to the Southern state, the value of black-owned property between 1875 and 1889, comparing occupations practiced by blacks and whites, and calculating the number of black students in different school courses (2 in business, 2,252 in industrial). By Allison Meier.

Professor, author and CEO of Clearly Innovative, Aaron Saunders talks about the challenges of being African-American in the tech industry.

Lawson was a pioneering black engineer back when it was even harder in Silicon Valley.

Russell Simmons’s new-media company hosts its own movie-awards show, a D.I.Y. response to the #OscarsSoWhite campaign.

A Virginia school district has banned the use of an educational video about racial inequality after some parents complained that its messaging is racially divisive. The four-minute, animated video — “Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race” — was shown last week to students at an assembly at Glen Allen High School, in Henrico County, as a part of the school’s Black History Month program.

You probably think you know the story of Rosa Parks, the seamstress who refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., 60 years ago—on Dec. 1, 1955—and thus galvanized the bus boycott that was a defining moment in the American civil rights movement. You also probably think you know what she looks like — from her mugshot most likely, or a picture of her being fingerprinted, or perhaps a later photo of her seated, looking out the window, on an integrated bus.

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission. It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m.

America has spoken, loud and clear. They want Harriet Tubman to be the face of our $20 bill.