• by Sara Guaglione , June 16, 2020

The Atlantic has released a collection of essays on race and racism in America from its 163-year-old archive.

Called “How Did We Get Here?,” the collection “aims to help Atlantic readers contextualize the current moment and deepen their own education and understanding of race in America,” according to a statement.

It includes archival pieces by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois and Julia Ward Howe, as well as modern articles and analysis from Adam Serwer, Vann Newkirk, Eve L. Ewing, Ibram X. Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones.

“This magazine was founded, in part, to argue in favor of abolition,” The Atlantic’s deputy editor Gillian White notes in an introduction to the collection.

“Confronting the continued realities of racism and its steep cost is painful and complex, and forces a question: How did it come to this?” White continued.

“Understanding the present moment requires grappling with a history stained by racial inequity, violence, and the constant fight for forward progress.” 

The earliest piece in the collection was published in 1857.

The collection is organized into historical categories, including: “Calls for Abolition, Civil War, Emancipation,” “Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Segregation,” “Civil Rights;” “Policing, Incarceration, Disinvestment” and “Economic Inequality, Police Violence, COVID-19.”