Michael Luo

Since the earliest days of the Republic, American citizenship has been contested, subject to the anti-democratic impulses of racism, suspicion, and paranoia.

In 1885, white rioters murdered dozens of their Asian neighbors in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 140 years later, the story of the atrocity is still being unearthed.

Even Trump’s recent assertion that he would use executive action to abolish birthright citizenship has a historical link to the Chinese American experience.

Gene Tong, a popular herbal-medicine doctor in Los Angeles, was hanged by a mob during one of the worst mass lynchings in American history.

Why did a local official, at the turn of the twentieth century, maintain a ledger tracking Chinese residents?

In the gold-rush era, ceremonial greetings swiftly gave way to bigotry and violence.

The surge in violence against Asian-Americans is a reminder that America’s present reality reflects its exclusionary past.

The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.

In the 1940s, scholars struggled over truth in reporting, the marketplace of ideas, and the free press. Their deliberations are more relevant than ever.

For Nixon stalwarts on the House Judiciary Committee, defending the President became an inalterable epitaph.