Reckoning With Racist ‘Lynch Law’ and Rape Charges, a Century Later

States Like Virginia Are Reexamining Long-Ago Cases on the Path Toward Redress and Redemption

This piece publishes alongside the Zócalo/Mellon Foundation program “How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future?” Read a summary of the event and watch the discussion here.

On July 12, 1898 John Henry James’ body, riddled with bullets, hanged from a locust tree. The Virginia man had been in the custody of the Albemarle County sheriff, awaiting grand jury action on a rape allegation, when a mob of 150 people kidnapped and killed him.

James, the story went, sexually assaulted one Julia Hotopp. (I belabor …

The ‘Ferociously Contested’ Story of How Blackness Became a Legal Identity | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The ‘Ferociously Contested’ Story of How Blackness Became a Legal Identity

In Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana, Colonial Laws Defining ‘Freedom’ Still Affected the Status of Citizens Centuries Later

How did Africans become “blacks” in the Americas?

Those who were forced into the ships of the infamous slave trade probably thought of themselves using ethnic and territorial terms that …

The Sarcastic Civil War Diarist Who Chronicled the Confederacy’s Fall

Raised in Plantation Privilege, Mary Boykin Chesnut Was Unprepared for the Trauma of War and Defeat

“February 18, 1861…. I do not allow myself vain regrets or sad foreboding. This Southern Confederacy must be supported now by calm determination and cool brains. We have risked all, …

How the Chesapeake Bay Formed American Identity

It's Been an Artery Through Which Democracy and Capitalism Flowed

When Captain Christopher Newport sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 to establish the first permanent English colony in North America, his goal was not freedom.

In that way, Newport, the …

Green Gem

Where I Once Caught Lightning Bugs, I Find Myself

Sometimes the places I go are the places I came from. Imprinted from infancy with a sense of belonging, I cannot help but return to the small community of Meadowview, …

Washington-Lee High School (Arlington, Va.)

Sweating through the Guilt

I couldn’t resist. I tried, I really did. I stayed away for more than a year, but in the end I succumbed. I pledged in The Washington Post that I …