This working paper presents decennial census data on population totals by race (1790-1990) and by Hispanic origin (1970-1990) for the United States, regions, divisions, and states.

White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Learn more about the history of this barbaric practice and how NAACP worked to end lynching.

Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans in ways that are still evident today. This report begins a necessary conversation to confront the injustice, inequality, anguish, and suffering that racial terror and violence created.

This report seeks to make the best and most current scholarly research on Virginia’s First Africans available to the general public, beginning with their West Central African origins, through their journey from West Central Africa to Virginia, and finally their identities and experiences in Virginia between 1619 and 1625. Following these narrative segments is an overview of the legal and cultural status of early Africans in Virginia.

The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world.

The smallpox epidemic that struck Boston in 1721 was one of the most deadly of the century in colonial America, but was also the catalyst for the first major application of preventative inoculation in the colonies. The use of inoculation laid the foundation for the modern techniques of infectious diseases prevention, and the contentious public debate that accompanied the introduction of this poorly understood medical technology has surprising similarities to contemporary misunderstandings over vaccination.

Information about slavery in the original "White House," the President's House in Philadelphia

One of the most significant contributions by an African American slave in the construction of the Capitol was made by Philip Reid.

The Tracing Center was founded in 2009 to build on our work in producing the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. This page offers a biography of the leading slave trader in the history of the United States.

Robert Hemmings (1762-1819) was the son of Elizabeth Hemings and John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law and Elizabeth Hemings’s owner before Jefferson inherited her. Born in 1762, Robert Hemmings was the first of their six children.

From the Thomas Jefferson Encylopedia

A Spotlight on a Primary Source by John Murray and Lord Dunmore

This series challenges one of our most fundamental beliefs: that humans come divided into a few distinct biological groups.

From the John Carter Brown Library

From the United States Office of the Historian

Text of the Supreme Court Decision

The Lincoln's Writings, The Multi-Media Edition

From The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 5

From the National Archives

From the White House Historical Association Slavery in the President's Neighborhood initiative.

From the Library of Congress

From History.com

From America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War

From The Jim Crow Museum

by Langston Hughes

The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp. 243-255

New York Times, 1862

Masur, K. (2010). The African American Delegation to Abraham Lincoln: A Reappraisal. Civil War History, 56(2), 117–144.

Vorenberg, M. (1993). Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Black Colonization. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 14(2), 22–45.

Costa, D. L. (2010). Pensions and Retirement Among Black Union Army Veterans. The Journal of Economic History, 70(3), 567–592.

Ross, Alex. The New Yorker, April 23, 2018