Sublime

Vito Marcantonio

In 1938 he launched the Partido Popular Democrático, the party he would lead until the end of his career. It campaigned on a slogan of “Bread, Land, and Liberty,” though that last term, liberty, was kept ambiguous. It resonated with the widespread resentment of colonial rule in Puerto Rico, yet it was vague enough to encompass many possibilities. M

The worst of it was on the other side of the globe, on the tiny Caribbean island of Navassa, near Haiti. Rather ominously, it was called Devil’s Island. Although Navassa didn’t have much actual guano, its coral reef was packed with deposits of tricalcium phosphate, the fossilized legacy of centuries’ worth of marine life—also a rich nutrient for ex

As I began, the words of the abolitionist William Wilberforce ran through my mind: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.”[1] In 1789, filled with passion over the evil of slavery and an unflinching commitment to see it end, he had risen in the British Parliament and described in unwavering graphic detai

Along the banks of the Ohio, and throughout the central valley, there are frequently found, at this day, tumuli raised by the hands of men. On exploring these heaps of earth to their centre, it is usual to meet with human bones, strange instruments, arms and utensils of all kinds, made of metal, or destined for purposes unknown to the present race.

Construction of the sixty-six-mile extension south from West Palm Beach was aided by a sizable contingent of convict labor leased to the Florida East Coast Railway at the rate of $2.50 a month. The company had to feed and house the men, but it was still an attractive deal when private labor might approach two dollars or more per day. The process to