“I thought about when I was twelve years old, lying awake at night in the top bunk above my fast-asleep brother, and how I would stare at the ceiling and whisper aloud, I wish I were black… I wish I were black…” writes Michael... Read More

“In the last forty-plus years there isn’t one second I’ve lived, from absolute joy to utter heartbreak, that would have been made better by drinking,” says Rebeta-Burditt. “Not one.” As a tired young wife and mother of three... Read More

At thirteen, Jacob Marateck left his home in a small Polish village to seek adventure in Warsaw. At twenty-one, he was conscripted into the Russian army just in time for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, and over the next few years joined... Read More

“Conscious of the propaganda value of displaying to the world how much he liked children, Hitler stooped and impulsively hugged me for a few moments…” This embrace, caught on camera at the German movie studio where Kuttner’s... Read More

In just three months’ time, from April to July 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda conducted a killing spree of Tutsis so widespread and deadly that it became the third recognized genocide of the twentieth century. To its shame, the United... Read More

In the last twelve years, Hank Frazee’s three children have enjoyed more than 7,000 bedtime stories. Each night he shared a small piece of their family history with them, building a bond not just between the four of them, but between... Read More

One day in school Vaswani’s teacher goes through a list of nationalities. The children are supposed to raise their hands when she names something that was part of their ancestry. Vaswani raises her hand for Pakistani, German, French,... Read More

In his speech, “A More Perfect Union,” Barack Obama quoted William Faulkner (“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”) to embody the idea that even though leaders no longer need to list the racial injustices of the... Read More