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Wanto Co. grocery store with a sign that reads "I Am An American"

Discovering Judith Shklar’s Skeptical Liberalism of Fear

Judith Shklar fled Nazis and Stalinism before discovering in African-American history the dilemma of modern liberalism.
Minskoff Theatre entrance.

Shakespeare Wrote His Best Works During a Plague

The qualities for which live theater is celebrated—audiences responding with laughter, tears, gasps, and coughs—accelerate its danger.

“The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming”

It’s hardly a secret, but, for a land that bills itself as a land of freedom and opportunity, America can be inhospitable to just about anyone.

The Decade America Terrorized Itself

The next 9/11 never came. Instead, we got Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas, and Parkland…
Exhibit

Fear Itself

We're not generally at our best when frightened. It's no surprise, then, that some of the ugliest episodes in American history (but also, some pretty great films) have been driven by fear.

Artwork titled Notes from Tervuren, featuring a figure against a multicolored painted music sheet.

Talking Drums

On the relationship between African American music traditions and one of the most infamous slave revolts, the Stono Rebellion, in colonial South Carolina.

Zombie Flu: How the 1919 Influenza Pandemic Fueled the Rise of the Living Dead

Did mass graves in the influenza pandemic help give rise to the living dead?
partner

How Fear of the Measles Vaccine Took Hold

We’re still dealing with the repercussions of a discredited 1998 study that sowed fear and skepticism about vaccines.

The Ghosts of Elaine, Arkansas, 1919

In America’s bloody history of racial violence, the little-known Elaine Massacre may rank as the deadliest.

The Slow Build Up to the American Revolution

American revolutionaries had a far wider range of reasons for supporting rebellion than we often assume.

‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’

What the chaos aboard Flight 93 on 9/11 looked like to the White House and the fighter pilots prepared to ram the plane's cockpit.
A UFO in front of hills

More UFOs Than Ever Before

What explains the apparently sudden spike in intergalactic traffic after WWII? If Cold War anxieties are to blame, why have sightings persisted?

White Power

A review of two recent books about white paramilitarism in the wake of the Cold War.

The Literal (and Figurative) Whiteness of Moby Dick

For Herman Melville, the color white could be horrifyingly bleak.
Black men confront armed whites in a Chicago street.

Hundreds of Black Deaths in 1919 are Being Remembered

America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened.
Black men confront armed whites in a Chicago street.

‘Ready To Explode’

How a black teen’s drifting raft triggered a deadly week of riots 100 years ago in Chicago.

One Hundred Years Ago, a Four-Day Race Riot Engulfed Washingon D.C.

Rumors ran wild as white mobs assaulted black residents who in turn fought back, refusing to be intimidated.

Haunted by the Reagan Era

Past defeats still scare older Democratic leaders — but not the younger generation.

A Lost Work by Langston Hughes Examines the Harsh Life on the Chain Gang

In 1933, the Harlem Renaissance star wrote a powerful essay about race. It has never been published in English—until now.

The Theory That Justified Anti-Gay Crime

Fifty years after Stonewall, the gay-panic defense seems absurd. But, for decades, it had the power of law.
Illustration of Peurifoy and others attempting to find homosexuals within the federal government.

The Homophobic Hysteria of the Lavender Scare

Despite a thriving queer community in Washington, the 1950s State Department fired gay and lesbian workers en masse.
Illustration of a Black man in an overcoat and a winter hat with earflaps.

Homeland Insecurity

Mystery sorrounds the life of alumnus Homer Smith, who spent decades on an international odyssey to find a freedom in a place he could call home.
Sunbathers and picnickers in Central Park.

How Central Park’s Complex History Played Into the Case Against the 'Central Park Five'

The furor that erupted throughout New York City cannot be disentangled from the long history of the urban oasis.

How the Bubonic Plague Almost Came to America

A Pompous Doctor, a Racist Bureaucracy, and More. From the book "Black Death at the Golden Gate".
Korean mothers and children cover their ears as they watch a battle.

The Forgotten War

What has fueled the hostility between the U.S. and North Korea for decades?
Veteran who was exposed to nuclear radiation.

The Atomic Soldiers

How the U.S. government used veterans as atomic guinea pigs.

The Experience That Taught Me Blackface and Klan Hoods Are Forms of Racial Terror

A childhood lesson in the backseat of a 1973 Mustang.

The History Before Us

How can we be sure the atrocities of the past will stay in the past?
Two men doing a "perp walk"
partner

Perp Walks: When Police Roll Out the Blue Carpet

Unfair maneuver or a strong warning to would-be criminals?
Painting of people pulling down a statue to King George III in New York City.

Patriot Propaganda

A new book argues that race and racism fueled the fires of the American Revolution.

How Horror Changed After WWI

The war created a new world, an alternate reality distinct from what most people before 1914 expected their lives to be.

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