U.S. Slavery

The Nobel laureate died Monday at 88. Terry Gross talked with Morrison in 1987 after she wrote Beloved, in 1992 after she authored Jazz and in 2015 when she published God Help the Child.

Journalist Brian Palmer toured several Confederate sites and monuments across the South and found a distorted message that celebrates the Confederacy and often omits the fact of slavery all together.

Historian David Blight's new biography describes Douglass' escape from slavery, his passionate leadership in the abolitionist movement and his gift as a writer and orator.

Edugyan's latest novel, Washington Black, tells the story of a boy who escapes slavery and embarks on a voyage of scientific discovery. It has been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize.

Author Mat Johnson reflects on how the election of Barack Obama, made him feel like he belonged in America for the first time.

John Powers reviews Ava DuVernay's film '13th.'

The new movie, which tells the story of Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt, is a righteous-vigilante tale — and an answer to D.W. Griffith's 1915 film of the same name.

In his new novel, The Underground Railroad, Whitehead returns to his childhood vision of the Underground Railroad as an actual locomotive that carries escaped slaves through tunnels.

A debut novel by Yaa Gyasi is one of this summer's most anticipated novels.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the remake of the 1977 mini series Roots. He says it deserves to be seen and talked about.

Chris Tomlinson covered conflict, including apartheid in Africa, for 11 years. Then the great-great-grandson of Texas slaveholders realized he needed to write a book about his family's history.

In The Empire of Necessity, historian Greg Grandin tells the story of a slave revolt at sea. The 1805 event inspired Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, and Grandin's account of the human horror is a work of power and precision.

In her new book, Andrea Stuart explores the intersection of sugar, slavery, settlement, migration and survival in the Americas. Stuart's personal history was shaped by these forces -- she is descended from a slave owner who had relations with an unknown slave.

In a new book, Civil War historian Bruce Levine says that from the destruction of the South emerged an entirely new country, making the Civil War equivalent to a second American Revolution. Integral to the Union's victory, he says, were the nearly 200,000 black soldiers who enlisted.

In The Long Road to Antietam, historian Richard Slotkin traces how both Northern and Southern strategies changed in the summer of 1862, when both sides committed to an all-out total war, and Lincoln squared off against Gen. George McClellan.

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. looks at the cultural legacy of African slaves brought to Latin America.

Abraham Lincoln always thought slavery was unjust — but struggled with what to do once slavery ended. Historian Eric Foner traces how Lincoln's thoughts about slavery — and freed slaves — mirrored America's own transformation in The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.