Though much of it is unwatchable today — it contains blackface and other minstrelsy — Shuffle Along brought jazz to Broadway and was the first African American show to be a smash hit.
FX's new documentary miniseries Pride focuses each of its six episodes on one decade in the fight for LGBTQ rights in America. NPR's Audie Cornish talks with Yance Ford, directed the 1990s episode.
South Carolina is now asking death-row inmates to choose between the electric chair and firing squad, citing a lack of lethal injection drugs. Critics say the move is more about conservative politics.
Maryland, though a slave-holding state, did not secede from the Union and attempted to maintain neutrality during the Civil War. The song was a full-throated defense of the Confederacy.
In the 1980s, false accusations of satanic ritual abuse spread across the U.S. Now, QAnon has revived those fears, borrowing from the playbook of the Satanic Panic from decades prior.
It's been four decades since the first U.S. AIDS cases were reported. Some people who experienced the early years of the crisis say the effects of denialism have carried into the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some Americans actually remember the gas lines of the 1970s and how they contributed to the downfall of two presidents. And if you don't, you've at least heard the stories and seen the pictures.
NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with linguist John McWhorter about his new book, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever, which looks at how profanities have evolved over centuries.
Barry Jenkins' adaptation of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad reaches us at a time when we are most prepared for its message, but severely challenged by its delivery system.