On New Year’s Eve, Black churches in New Orleans and across the country will continue the tradition known as Watch Night or ...

January 1, 2013, marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and in light of the historical milestone, two educators — Deborah Willis, New York University photographic historian, and ...

United States National Archives in Washington, DC with a huge flag hanging on its columns.(Getty Images/iStockphoto/OGphoto) “The people to whom this order was addressed, were the last group of ...

In a new book, historian Harold Holzer explores the carefully calibrated timing and delivery of Lincoln's ultimatum to the rebellious states.... 'Emancipating Lincoln': A Pragmatic Proclamation One ...

On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in Washington, D.C., freeing more than 3,000 people. It was a joyful day in the midst of the Civil War that came after decades of effort ...

This booklet was produced in December 1862 specifically for Union soldiers to read and distribute among African Americans. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and ...

Union morale was faltering in the spring of 1863, when a photograph that came to be known as “The Scourged Back” appeared in Harper’s Weekly. The image — of an escaped enslaved man exposing a treelike ...

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deborah Willis: It was important for me to research the idea of how people left America because they did not feel that it was a country that was ...