Histories

The story of William Cimillo, a NYC bus driver who snapped one day in 1947, and took a 1300-mile detour to Florida.

This is the story of a song, “Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down.” It was written by a 12-year-old boy on what was supposed to be his deathbed.

How an army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan.

What would it sound like if one of the world’s greatest classical cellists, and the most legendary blues guitarist of all time…jammed together?

Black Swan Records was the first major Black-owned record label in the United States.

The struggle against apartheid, told through the voice of Nelson Mandela, and those who fought with him, and against him. Featuring rare...

For over 30 years, commuters on NYC's subways and buses were greeted by posters of Miss Subways: beauty queens of one of the nation's first integrated beauty contests.

The story of what happens when, instead of people crossing the border, the border crosses the people.

In 1918, millions of WWI veterans returned to the U.S. to a cruel surprise: their cash bonus wouldn't be paid out until 1945. So, a group of Oregon veterans decided to go to Washington, D.C. to demand their money. They called themselves the "Bonus Army."

In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs. 40 years later, we followed up to find out what happened to them.

In the 1960s, the U.S. was losing in the space race to the Soviet Union. So, it decided to do something no country had done: send the first Black person to space.

On August 6, 1930, two African-American teenagers were charged with the murder of a factory worker, and the rape of his wife. A mob lynched them that evening. But a third Black teen was supposed to die that day. This is his story.

The secret WWII program to arrest Latin Americans and exchange them for American prisoners of war.

In 1963, at least 15 Black girls were imprisoned in the Leesburg Stockade for 45 days.

Hart Island, an uninhabited strip of land off the Bronx, is America’s largest public cemetery, sometimes known as a “potter’s field.”...

Ground-breaking, but controversial broadcasters who each used the microphone in different ways: one to warn, one to rile, one to preach.

Former Senator Fred Harris is the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission.

Secret Service Agent Clint Hill was in the motorcade the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

In the spring of 1981, two minor-league teams played the longest game in professional baseball.

Pat Rush and her family fled Arkansas in the wake of the Dust Bowl.