The story of the American Civil War is essentially one of human beings––Northerners, Southerners, Blacks, Whites, men, women–– holding themselves accountable for the future of a nation.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators...

That was when I realized we weren’t born to beslaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there...

Of all America’s natural resources, its richest is an inexhaustible vein of irony.

I couldn’t figure out if it was fate or faith that had brought me there. How funny those two words sounded when paired together. One was the inevitable, something I could not change in my...

For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, lawyers, and politicians.

We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era’s creativity, its seemingly...

But when they brought Sabira out, the crowd parted almost magically. A sea of hands rose faster than a swell and a bidding war commenced, amongst these civilized gentlemen who made their living off the...

People believe what they want to believe. Even if it isn’t true.

It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate between blacks.

The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven’t stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military...

established” facts…Please join me in getting to know Joseph Warren, accompanying him on his lifetime’s journey to Bunker Hill, and considering the fate of his reputation and memory long after his heroic demise.

War has been glorified by men who have never been shot at.

To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person – few love a spokesman for...

Once people said: Give me liberty or give me death. Now they say: Make me a slave, just pay me enough.

The tongue and pen are great outlets for wrath and resentment. (1849)

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than...

the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property.

In America, I appear more simple that I am, because I was completely out of my element. It was my misfortune, not my fault, that I was born in a country which was not congenial...

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

Right now I’m thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was emancipation. It’s a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy – and it...

The races are like America’s children. White people are the firstborn, so they were Dad’s favorite. Black people are the second kids, the abused ones, so they still hate Dad. Latinos are the third, caught...

p. 274 …his trademark decision to surrender power as commander in chief and then president, was not…a sign that he had conquered his ambitions, but rather that he fully realized that all ambitions were inherently...

Benjamin Franklin was a real tomcat, no woman was safe from his lightening bolt

Far from being marginalized, as is presently the case, nineteenth-century freethought was a social movement at the core of our national life.

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think….Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.

I was on one of my world ‘walkabouts.’ It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew...

American whale oil lit the world. It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution. The baleen cut from...

Native Americans cured Cartier’s men of scurvy near Montreal in 1535. They repaired Francis Drake’s Golden Hind in California so he could complete his round-the-world voyage in 1579. Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the Pacific...

How a member of the church—one who had read the Good Lord’s bible—could sit so calmly and watch a man be led to his destruction frightened me.

Each of us lives with a sword over his head.There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are...