A sex worker on Cass Avenue, Detroit, 1965.

Red Lights, Blue Lines

Three recent books examine the discrimination and hypocrisy at the heart of policing “vice.”
Polar bear walks across melting ice in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Did One Photograph Change the Fate of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?

What the political fight over a photo teaches us about the power of art, grassroots activism and images.
Women's rights activists Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, Lucretia Mott, Harriot Kezia Hunt, and Harriet Martineau.

Why the 1850 Worcester Women's Rights Convention Is a Vital Part of History

Women’s rights activism has shaped America for the better throughout our history, so why should colleges be banned from teaching it?
Roger Taney.

On “Mobility and Sovereignty: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Immigration Restriction”

Examining slavery, Indian removal, and state policies regulating mobility to trace the constitutional origins of immigration restriction in the 1800s.
A Black soldier of the 12th Armored Division stands guard over a group of Nazi prisoners captured in the surrounding German forest, April 1945.
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Prisoners Like Us: German POW and Black American Solidarity

During World War II, almost a half million POWs were interned in the United States, where they forged sympathetic relationships with Black American soldiers.
Ngango of Cameroon speaks to a crowd gathered at D.C.'s MLK Memorial.
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We’ve Erased Black Immigrants From Our Story, Obscuring a Racist System

We see our history of racism against Black Americans as distinct from our immigration policy, but the two are actually deeply intertwined.
Black soldiers in battle.

Double V: Military Racism

Today, the military is perhaps the largest integrated institution in the US. But how it came to be this way reveals a history of racism and resistance.
Image from cover of "Reconsidering Reparations"

Reconsidering Reparations

Reparations must be rooted in a political context that will safeguard rather than erode the gains they make towards justice.
Vaishno Das Bagai (top right), Ramesh Chandra, Abnashi Ram, and other early South Asian immigrants, early 1920s.

United States of America vs. Vaishno Das Bagai

One-hundred years ago, the U.S. government waged a deliberate and organized campaign against South-Asian Americans.
Protesters at a police brutality rally at the Texas State Capitol in 1977.

The Killing of José Campos Torres

Decades before the recent police violence in Memphis, a brutally beaten Latino man was tossed by officers into a Houston bayou and drowned.
Illustration of the Supreme Court and a school house mirroring each other. The Supreme Court sits atop a dollar bill, and the school house is upside down on the other side of the bill.

The Racist Idea that Changed American Education

How a landmark Supreme Court decision was shaped by the racist idea that poor children can’t learn.
Sketch of a bedroom with a double bed, a prison courtyard outside the window.
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Controversy and Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits were first allowed as incentives for the forced labor of incarcerated Black men, the practice expanding from there. Is human touch a right?
Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts shaking hands at Super Bowl 57.
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It Took Until 2023 for Two Black QBs to Start in a Super Bowl. Here’s Why.

Ideas dating back to slavery have minimized opportunities for Black quarterbacks in the NFL.
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 book cover with photo of Jewish immigrants in the street on the Lower East Side, NYC.

The Great Kosher Meat War Of 1902

Immigrant housewives and the riots that shook New York City.
A newly registered voter fills out a sample ballot for sheriff in Lowndes County. The ballot has the logo of the Black Panther Party formed by Stokely Carmichael of SNCC.

How Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers Changed the Civil Rights Movement

Much of what's happening in American race relations traces back to 1966, the year the Black Panthers were formed.
Rev. Billy Graham with President Kennedy.

Suing the FBI and Uncovering a History of White Christian Nationalism

A new book calls white evangelicals to reckon with the fact that the groundwork for their movement was laid, in part, by J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.
Map of John Proctor's 15 acres of property in Ipswich, MA

"The Crucible" and John and Elizabeth Proctor of Salem

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the family matters between John and Elizabeth.
Signs on the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota last month.
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Florida is Trying to Roll Back a Century of Gains for Academic Freedom

The state wants to severely limit what professors can say in the classroom.
A group of white veteran students in 1945, beneficiaries of the GI Bill.

The Blindness of Colorblindness

Revisiting "When Affirmative Action Was White," nearly two decades on.
Purple ribbon and pin to raise awareness of domestic violence.
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Femicide is Up. American History Says That’s Not Surprising.

Reversing the rising tide of femicide requires understanding its deep roots in the United States.

Civil Rights Legislation Sparked Powerful Backlash that's Still Shaping American Politics

Conservatives and the GOP have mounted a decadeslong legal fight to turn the clock back on the political gains of the civil rights movement.
SCLC leader Wyatt T. Walker and Jackie Robinson tour the ruins of Mount Olive Baptist Church, Sasser, Georgia, September 9th, 1962.

‘A Model Southern Sheriff’: Z.T. Mathews and the 1962 Fight for Voting Rights in Terrell County

A glaring portrait of the human cost of law enforcement officers who claim to be above the law.
W.E.B. Du Bois speaking in 1949.

During Reconstruction, a Brutal ‘War on Freedom’

First-person accounts of those scarred in many ways by the era’s violence suggest Reconstruction did not fail, it was overthrown by violence.
Civil Rights marchers with signs for equal rights, housing, and integrated schools.

How a Group of Black Activists Inspired Solidarity and Struggle in Mississippi

Freedom Summer in the segregationist heart of the Deep South.

Louis Congo: Ex-Slave and Executioner of Louisiana

Although freed from slavery, Louis Congo's job as public executioner ensured him a life as a pawn of French officials and retaliation from those he disciplined.
Agnes Wilkinson, Ahmeenah Young, and Aishah Shahidah Simmons.

Black Power Meets Police Power

The experiences of Michael and Zoharah Simmons show that the fight against the carceral state is embedded in a larger project of building a just world.
Black Panther mural dating from 1996, side wall of Rick’s Barbershop, 3406 Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, 2011 (LOC).

George Jackson in a Global Frame

The story of George Jackson and his radical politics that challenged the American Government in an age of political repression.
Harold "Red" Grange, one of the biggest stars of the early NFL.

NFL Television Broadcasting and the Federal Courts

The NFL's control over entertainment.
Lizzie Fletcher, center, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats applaud as Marilyn Strickland speaks on reproductive freedom.
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What the Next 50 Years of Reproductive Rights Activism Can Learn from the Last 50

Success moving forward requires building a more inclusive movement than what existed during the Roe v. Wade era.
Oscar Andrade prays at the Ironwood Forest National Monument near Marana, Ariz., before searching for a missing Honduran migrant, in September.
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Border Enforcement Has Been Deadly By Design

The Biden administration’s expanded use of Title 42 to expel asylum seekers will take a toll.