BackStory

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It turns out that all good things must come to an end...including BackStory.

This Friday we’re airing the final episode of BackStory, in which Nathan, Joanne, Ed, and Brian explore different kinds of finales throughout American history.

In this best of BackStory, we present three of our listener’s favorite interviews from the show.

In most history classes, students learn that the Emancipation Proclamation and Union victories “freed the slaves.” But ending slavery in America required much more than battlefield victories and official declarations. Black people battled for their own freedom, taking incredible risks for a country that had actively denied their right to it. And after the Civil War, they made freedom real by organizing for equality and justice.

On Seizing Freedom, you’ll hear stories of freedom taking and freedom making, in the words of those who did both. Drawing on stories from diaries, newspapers, letters, and speeches, we’ll recreate voices that have been muted time and time again.

This excerpt is from the first episode of the series. It tells the story of those who escaped slavery to enlist with the Union Army—an army that wasn’t particularly interested in having them.

Subscribe to the entire series here.

On this episode of BackStory, Joanne is joined by Jonathan Wells and Nancy Metz to tell the story of Dickens’ tumultuous -- but ultimately triumphant -- relationship to the United States and his American readers.

On this episode of The Last Archive, historian Jill Lepore tells the story of a Spring day in 1919, when a woman’s body was found bound, gagged, and strangled in a garden in Barre, Vermont.

On this episode of BackStory, Joanne and Brian learn about how different communities have struggled to acquire adequate health care.

On this episode of BackStory, Joanne and Ed shine a light onto the dark history of true crime in modern American history.