Athlon Sports and American Legacy announce partnership to publish a special co-branded insert that will appear in the February 2014 issue of Athlon Sports Magazine. This insert will celebrate the historical achievements of African-Americans in Sports! Circulation: 10.8 million!!! Visit www.athlonsports.com. Follow American Legacy on Twitter...

Above from left: “American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,” 1942; “A Choice of Weapons,” 1965; Ethel Shariff in Chicago, 1963. The late, great Gordon Parks—who died in March 2006 was, among other things, a social activist artist. Setting aside his films—The Learning Tree and Shaft—his poetry, and musical compositions, Parks was a prolific recorder of history. He was pragmatic enough to know, early on, that if he wanted to...

Above Image: Pepper Pot, A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, by John Lewis Krimmel, 1811. From the time the Isabella, carrying 150 Africans, arrived from Bristol, England, until 1780, when Pennsylvania passed the first emancipation law in the United States, the city had watched enslaved Africans disembark onto its docks in chains, to be sold on the corner of Front and Market Streets in front of the London Coffee House. Today on that corner...

For most of us the name Sleepy Hollow brings forth images from Washington Irving’s 1819 legend of the hapless schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, who is chased one night by a terrifying headless horseman and mysteriously disappears, never to be heard from again. But there is another picture of the Dutch enclave Irving lovingly paints, one of a bucolic place where life moves slowly and tradition holds sway: “I mention this peaceful spot with all...

In 2008 I stood in what was the nursery in a house called Travellers Rest in Nashville, Tennessee. I say “house,” although its former owner John Overton, a judge, banker, planter, the founder of the city of Memphis, and a slave owner—might have objected what he might have considered a puny term. It was a sizable home, built in 1799 and added on to and renovated over the next 120 or so years. Still, as part of a tour of the city, I had...