Justice

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?

A newly released classified document shows that the National Security Agency knew Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy—and that the government executed her anyway.

History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.

Understanding the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century gives insight into the roots of today’s reactionary activists and policymakers.

In 1984, only 18 American states denied that wives were the sexual property of their husbands.

Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age.

Our country has a long history of admiring particular acts of violence.

The week between Christmas and the new year offered a rare opportunity for enslaved people to reclaim their humanity.

Two new books examine how colonial logic has long been embedded within US carceral systems.

Second-wave feminists meant business—but they had a lot of fun at it, too.

It's crucial to understand the real history behind claims that men are being marginalized.

If Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. gets confirmed, the Bureau could be politicized in ways that even its notorious first director would have rejected.

What is an apology from the President of the United States worth if reparations do not include cessation of settler colonial violence?

An investigation of the US’s mass internment of Japanese Americans.

Across the history of the U.S. abortion-rights movement, it has also been a matter of equality.

Am 1884 guide to vice and crime by the founder of the world’s largest private detective agency.

Since George Floyd’s murder, some white allies seek ways to fight racial inequality. Detroit’s 1960s "racially parallel organizing" offers insights.

Can speech be free when billionaires buy influence on campus?

Women abolitionists held annual Christmas bazaars to raise money for the cause; these fairs sold everything from needlework to books to Parisian dresses.

Rankin's 'Letters on American Slavery' set out a moral argument for abolition that resonated across the nation.

Why did it take so long for the U.S. Army to authorize the enlistment of Black men as soldiers?

Christine Jorgensen and the birth of trans bathroom panic.

The incoming Trump administration wants to take away citizenship for the US-born children of undocumented immigrants. Here’s how.

Under pressure from his wealthy family, Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander claimed that his new wife, Alice Beatrice Jones, had tricked him into believing she was white.

Following a 1925 investigation, immigrant detention in the Galveston County Jail was declared “a crime against humanity.”

A story of intrigue and power involving union organizers, Black laundry workers, the Mafia, and the FBI in 1980s Detroit.

Historically, liberals defended the First Amendment and our free speech rights. Now, too many on the left seek to undermine constitutional protections.

Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.

Many of today's most influential right-wing tactics and arguments have their roots in 1960s-era college campuses.

The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches.