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A mid growing maternal mortality rates, Black and Indigenous women in the U.S. are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. Many women of color experience painful and traumatic hospital experiences as a result of structural racism and being historically neglected by the American health care system. And while maternal care experts have noted the improved health outcomes that come with midwifery care—less medical intervention and fewer C-sections—over 90% of midwives are white, highlighting how hard it is for Black women to find Black providers. But it always wasn’t this way. In 19th century America, interracial midwifery was the primary form of prenatal care. And yet, as childbirth became more medicalized, Black women and women of color were erased from providing maternal health care. Understanding the origin of this disparity is key to addressing the shortage of midwives of color and making the profession more diverse. For generations, pregnancy c...

I n October 2023, digital pirates stole one of the most important research libraries in the world. The hacking group Rhysida severed access to the British Library in a ransomware attack, hijacking nearly a half million files in the process. The collection items remained nestled safe in their book boxes in climate-controlled storage. But a library is so much more than its books. The many things that make a library a library—the catalogues that make items findable and organized and retrievable, the registries of readers and staff, the data upon data upon data—was subject to this theft. It is only slowly being rebuilt, months after the attack. The theft is extremely troubling and has attracted significant global attention, because the British Library is an essential public good, for both casual users and the researchers from across the world who rely on it as a resource for learning. As the British Library recovers from this heinous attack on global knowledge and public services, its reli...

T here is a tradition central to the functioning of the American presidency that is frequently overlooked: drinking wine. Beginning with George Washington, presidents have used wine to welcome guests, create friendships, and toast alliances. While presidents have had individual preferences for various wines, their collective attention to wine service at the White House testifies to the long and important role of wine in White House hospitality. Eighteenth-century Americans enjoyed mostly fortified European wines such as Port, sherry, and Madeira, which were functional in large part because they could survive long transatlantic journeys. Although President Washington certainly liked his Madeira, he turned to Thomas Jefferson for advice in selecting wines for his guests. Jefferson, minister to France in the 1780s, had toured and tasted his way through the wine regions of France, Germany, and Italy, and he introduced wines to America that were extraordinarily diverse for the time and plac...

T he student loan debt crisis has been a central focus of the Biden Administration, and with good reason. Americans’ collective student loan debt is second only to our outstanding mortgage debt. But as researchers and commentators have pointed out, that debt load is proportionally higher among women and Black people, adding more financial stress to the lives of folks who already have lower incomes and net worth compared with their white male peers. Because of these factors, student loan debt exacerbates inequalities in American society, including racial inequality. While college loan debt is defined as a 21st century problem, History shows us that debt has long been used intentionally to reinforce racial, gendered, and economic hierarchies. A prime example is the jail system in pre-Civil War Richmond, Va., where limiting public funding for jails shifted the financial burden of incarceration from the state onto Black Richmonders, reducing some free members of that community to virtual ...

I n February 1958, 26-year-old African-American pianist Philippa Schuyler paid a visit to Morocco. Afterward, her mother received an enthusiastic letter from the United States Foreign Service: “Philippa came saw and conquered Rabat and Casablanca. She was interviewed over the radio and gave concerts to two enthusiastic audiences... We were all very proud and happy over her performances here.” The Morocco stops marked the culmination of a 14-country tour of Africa that began the previous month in Nigeria. Along the way, Schuyler met Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Ghana’s Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, President William Tubman of Liberia, as well as a host of royals, cabinet members, dignitaries, and university students from across the continent. Black newspapers in the United States hailed it as “the most extensive tour ever made by an American performer in Africa.” Together, these accounts—one sent to her doting mother and carefully placed within the pages of a scrapbook, the other s...

O n Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on postponing the EPA’s "Good Neighbor” rule, a policy designed to address interstate pollution.  The Clean Air Act requires that states that produce pollution upwind of other states ensure that the downwind states can meet air-quality standards. In 2023, the EPA issued a plan to cover 23 states that did not comply with revised standards for ozone. Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia, alongside several companies and trade unions, are challenging the rule, calling it a “failed experiment” that ignores the intent of the Clean Air Act. They argue that the seminal law did not intend for the EPA to exercise “top-down control” and instead required that the agency “respect[s] the States’ sovereign authority to regulate air quality within their borders under the Act.” But the History of the Clean Air Act shows otherwise. The law did originally recognize the need for federal control to supplement state actions. It was only later that its r...

T he city of Cedar Falls, Iowa, recently gifted Amazon—one of the world’s largest corporations—free land and a multi-year tax abatement to build a 50,000-square-feet distribution center. This is nothing new. For decades now, U.S. municipalities and states have given America’s largest retailers billions of taxpayer funds, in the name of creating jobs. City officials frequently calculate that such deals will generate new job opportunities and, eventually, increase property tax sources. But these arrangements also generate unseen and unanticipated costs. The retail industry has long benefited from government support. In the early 20th century, for instance, downtown department stores lobbied for the construction of roads, public transportation, and infrastructure like railroads to bring consumers and merchandise to their stores. Later in the century, the rise of suburban shopping centers relied on the expansion of government-built highways. But even then, retailers—not local taxpayers—too...