Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
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Robert LaFollette Sr.
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The Legacy of Robert La Follette's Progressive Vision

Robert La Follette saw politics as a never-ending struggle for democracy and fairness and preached perseverance.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘The Great Gatsby’ at One Hundred

The neglected Catholic overtones of an American classic.
Donald Trump and Kristi Noem visiting Alligator Alcatraz.
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The Dark History That Predates Trump's 'Alligator Alcatraz'

The location of Trump's immigrant detention center has a painful history of incarceration, abuse, and private interests.
Magazine ad for Johnson & Johnson baby products.

Licensed to Ill

The disquieting story of an American health-product giant.
Photo collage of 20th century women's fashion.

The 20th Century Designer Who Put Common Sense Into Women’s Fashion

A new book recognizes Claire McCardell as a pioneer of American womenswear as we know it.
Buildings drawing and black and white negative, on the cover of "Yale and Slavery."

What Universities Owe

David Blight's report "Yale and Slavery" considers institutional accountability in the context of a world marked by systemic violence and inequality.
World Trade Center towers burning on 9/11.

The Righteous Community: Legacies of the War on Terror

A new book traces how "the wet dream of an ageing militarist has become a fundamental force driving American foreign policy."
New citizens at a naturalization ceremony.

Our Cherished Values and Ideals

Celebrating immigrants on the nation's birthday.
A pride flag framing the US Capitol building.
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The Lavender Scare and the History of LGBTQ Exclusion

The rollback of LGBTQ rights echoes a deeply consequential chapter of American history: the Lavender Scare.
Mugshot of a man staring blandly into the camera.

What I Inherited from My Criminal Great-Grandparents

In working through the Winter case files, I often felt pinpricks of déjà vu: an exact turn of phrase, an absurdly specific expenditure.
The word "god" is visible, chiseled into the wall behind a statue of Thomas Jefferson.
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Why the Founders Fought for Separation of Church and State

Establishing freedom of religion was a hard-fought success of the American Founding. Today we are still fighting.
55th Massachusetts marches through Charleston, 1865.
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Elevating the Few

What J.D. Vance excludes from the history of the Civil War and immigration.
Columbia University building shrouded in darkness.

In the Hallowed Place Where There’s Only Darkness

Columbia University as security state.
Reverend Barber speaking at an antipoverty rally.

Gird Up, Get Up, and Grow Up

On the origin and growth of the Moral Mondays movement.
Johann Neem

Bringing American History Back Home for the 250th

Challenges, opportunities, stakes.
A man walks down the street dressed as Uncle Sam and carries a large baby Donald Trump doll.

Cracked, Costly Fantasies

The legacy of right-wing ideologies in California.
Images of historical figures including Bejamin Franklin and Albert Einstein are overlaid on a green and white background.

Who’ll Be in Trump’s Hero Garden? There Are a Few Surprises.

The list of nearly 250 includes the famous, the obscure and, in some cases, the intentionally controversial.
Painting of a mutiny aboard a ship.

Reading Melville in Post-9/11 America

The author's half-forgotten masterpiece, Benito Cereno, provides fascinating insight into issues of slavery, freedom, individualism—and Islamophobia.
Scaffolding behind the statue of the rule of law outside the Supreme Court building.

Trump Is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship. History Proves It.

Lawmakers knew the Fourteenth Amendment would apply to the children of immigrants.
Belle Meade Plantation in Tennessee.

Black Women’s Voices and the Archive

The archive silences the voices of Black women, invalidating the realities of Black women and subjecting enslaved and free(d) women to epistemic violence.
Brent Bozell and William F. Buckley, reading a book about Joseph McCarthy.

All In the Family

How William F. Buckley Jr. turned his father’s private convictions and prejudices into a major political movement.
A Los Angelas police officer walks away from a police cruiser with a damaged windshield.

"Corporate America’s Security Guards In-Blue": State Violence and Latinx Protest in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has a history of Latinx protest; one that is often marred by police violence.
Mount Rushmore

On Myths and Monuments

Mount Rushmore and storytelling at America’s national parks.
A protestor holds up a sign which reads "tax the rich."
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The Founders Knew Great Wealth Inequality Could Destroy Us

At the founding of America, leaders predicted that a concentration of wealth would weaken the republic.
Totwar Land Office building.

No Place of Grace

Coming to terms with free-state slavery through historic buildings and public history.
Destroyed buildings in Gaza.

Can Genocide Studies Survive a Genocide in Gaza?

A discipline born from the study of the Holocaust faces its contradictions as Israel stands accused of the “crime of crimes.”
Pickets supporting and opposing a House subcommittee on Un-American Activities hearing in 1964.

Reading, Writing, and Redbaiting

When McCarthy stalked the groves of academe.
H.A. Smith is sworn in as a first witness at a HUAC hearing.

American Hysteria

Red Scare can be read as solid history of the years it depicts—and chilling prophecy of the years to come.
Claire McCardell

It Has Pockets!

How Claire McCardell changed women’s fashion.
A Democratic donkey with its head cut off is surrounded by hands pointing at charts and graphs.

How Strategist Brain Took Over the Democratic Party

During the Reagan revolution, Democrats settled on a new way to win—and it’s destroying them now.
Wanto Company storefront with a sign that reads "I am an American."

Alien Enemies

The torturers have been revising, the gestapos have been busy, and the prisons have been full for generations.

A Supreme Court Justice Wrote the Greatest “No Kings” Essay in History

This opinion is a milestone in the rule of law and is regularly cited by conservative and liberal justices alike.
Jimmy Swaggart holds up a bible. The word "legacy" is superimposed over him.

‘The LORD Told Me It’s Flat None of Your Business’: Jimmy Swaggart’s Scandalous Legacy

Jimmy Swaggart utilized his charisma to overcome not one, but two sex scandals.
A crowd of Chinese immigrants stands around in a train depot.
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The China Business

At the turn of the century in upstate New York, one tiny town learned there was money to make in the jailing of Chinese migrants.
Donald Trump; Alexander Hamilton.

Trump Is Hamiltonian, Not Jacksonian

He believes in Federalist 70’s “Energy in the Executive.”
Still frame from the film Inherit the Wind depicts a legal team sitting in a packed courtroom.
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How Theater Helps Us Remember the Scopes Trial 100 Years Later

'Inherit the Wind' changed how people understand, and remember, the legendary Scopes trial.
Deportees walk in a line while coordinators stand nearby in reflective yellow vests.

The Sordid History of Offshoring Migrants

Trump is only the latest to embrace a costly and immoral tactic.
Mexican Americans in a detention camp.

A Nation of Imprisoned Immigrants

Jails have been foundational to immigration enforcement for over a century—and have always operated with a staggering absence of oversight and public awareness.
A painting of a waterfall in the Rocky Mountains.

America the Beautiful

The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times.
James Garfield
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A Mere Mass of Error

Two stories from the 19th century about government records being falsified to foment distrust of nonwhite Americans.
Japanese-American man in a military uniform.

He Spent His Life Trying to Prove That He Was a Loyal U.S. Citizen. It Wasn’t Enough.

How Joseph Kurihara lost his faith in America.
Alligator

Why Do Fascists Dream Of Alligators?

Long before the new detention facility in Florida, the reptile has featured in the fantasies of Southern racists.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Acey Harper/Getty Images.

The Angry Death of Kimberly Bergalis

A dark mystery shocked America in the early 1990s, from prime-time shows to Congress. It’s largely been forgotten. It shouldn’t be.
JD Vance

J.D. Vance's Anti-Declaration

Truths self-evident no more.
Illustration by Adrià Fruitós.

Greater America Has Been Exporting Disunion for Decades

So why are we still surprised when the tide of blood reaches our own shores?
Union workers hold American flags and a sign reading "No work without a fair contract."

Requiem for the Wagner Act

Signed into law 90 years ago, labor’s onetime ‘magna carta’ is now a very dead letter.
Jesus Jones on stage.

Right Here, Right Now: Jesus Jones and the Post-Cold War Moment

For a brief window at the end of the Cold War, British alt-rock band Jesus Jones tapped into global feelings of optimism and hope.
National Archives building.
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Scratching the Record

On the long history of governments attempting to restrict access to documents about their inner workings.
Coastal telegraph semaphore tower, 1799.

The Secret Signal

The semaphore towers of the Hudson.
A snowcapped mountain surrounded by forest reflects in a lake at North Cascades National Park.

Remembering What the Parks Forgot

On memory, erasure, and the return of indigenous presence.
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