Using history to report on systemic racism
The Investigative Project on Race and Equity hosted a virtual training on “Investigating History for Reparative Storytelling,” led by investigative journalist Logan Jaffe of ProPublica and journalist and public historian Laura Kebede-Twumasi.
The session gave reporters tools to weave history into accountability reporting and to uncover how systemic racism shapes today’s news.
The training built on the Investigative Project’s mission to equip journalists with skills for investigating racial inequities.
Jaffe and Kebede-Twumasi noted how journalists often frame stories as if they’re happening for the first time, when history actually offers patterns of precedents that can shift how a story is understood.
The value of history in reporting
The trainers outlined three ways in which history can strengthen journalism, each directly tied to racial equity:
Reparative storytelling. Revisiting past harms to give families and communities—including Black, Indigenous, immigrant or otherwise marginalized people—the chance to be heard after generations of silence.
Recognizing patterns. Revealing how systemic racism and inequities are carried forward through policy and practice across decades.
Driving impact. Documenting historical wrongs in order to support present-day movements for racial justice.
For more examples of how each of these approaches looks in practice, click here to read our roundup of case studies.
Using archives
Much of the training focused on archives and how they can expose or obscure systemic racism.
The trainers stressed that archives are not neutral, reflecting the perspectives of those who created and maintained them. That means official collections often privilege those in power while minimizing or excluding voices of marginalized communities.
Reporters should “listen for the silences” by asking whose voices are missing and why, Kebede-Twumasi said.
Practical tips included:
Reach out early to archivists and historians.
Use “finding aids,” which are guides that describe what’s inside collections.
Balance institutional archives with community archives that center marginalized voices.
Treat artifacts like flyers, oral histories and scrapbooks as valuable sources alongside official documents.
Jaffe emphasized that community archives are especially critical for reporting on racial equity.
University or government archives can often reinforce official narratives, while grassroots collections like Black newspapers or neighborhood history projects can preserve perspectives that institutions excluded, Jaffe said.
Integrating history into stories
For journalists on deadline, Jaffe and Kebede-Twumasi emphasized that weaving history into a story doesn’t have to mean a sprawling feature. Even a single sentence noting that a slogan or policy has roots in segregation can provide readers with essential context.
They offered examples of how to integrate history into different formats:
A Q&A with a historian as a sidebar to a daily story.
Linking modern policy debates back to redlining or segregation-era campaigns.
Adding a single historical line in a news brief to show its continuity.
The trainers also provided demonstrations of archival tools reporters can use under deadline pressure, including the Chicago Collections Consortium, which allows journalists to search across multiple libraries, museums and universities at once.
For a deeper look at how to use archival resources like the Chicago Collections Consortium, click here.
The session closed with a reminder from the late sociologist James Loewen: “Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present, and causing justice in the present helps us tell the truth about the past.”
For journalists, the message was clear that weaving history into reporting is essential to telling the truth about systemic racism and advancing racial equity.