Two people hold signs protesting the expulsion of Haitian refugees.
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Violence and Racism Against Haitian Migrants Was Never Limited to Agents on Horseback

American immigration policy towards Haitians has been cruel for decades.
A three panel image of Carrie Buck, Britney Spears, and Ann Cooper Hewitt.

Britney Spears, Carrie Buck and the Awful History of Controlling ‘Unfit’ Women

Behind Britney Spears's struggle to regain control of her fortune and her medical decisions is a long history of robbing women of basic freedoms.
The 101st Airborne outside Central High School in Little Rock
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Violence Over Schools is Nothing New in America

Schools have long been ideological and physical battlegrounds — especially when it comes to citizenship and civil rights.
Anti-vaxxer holding a sign that says save our children

School Board Meetings Used to be Boring. Why Have They Become War Zones?

Conservatives can’t turn back the clock. But they can disrupt local meetings.
A black and white photo of new suburban homes, 1963.

When Real Estate Agents Led the Fight Against Fair Housing

A new book argues that the real estate industry’s campaign to defend housing segregation still echoes in today’s politics.
Women holding protest signs, demonstrating against school materials, 1975

When a Battle to Ban Textbooks Became Violent

In 1974, the culture wars came to Kanawha County, West Virginia, inciting protests over school curriculum.
National Park Services sign
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The Roots of the Politicization of the National Parks Service

Understanding how the National Park Service Director is chosen is important for understanding the current state of our national parks system.
Photo of Jefferson Davis

The Southern Slaveholders Dreamed of a Slaveholding Empire

Antebellum slaveholders weren't content with an economic and social system based on trafficking in human flesh in the South alone.
A portrait of John C. Calhoun

No, John C. Calhoun Didn’t Invent the Filibuster

As convenient as it might be to blame the filibuster on the famous defender of slavery, the historical record is much messier.
The word "bipartisanship" with the "bi" scribbled out.

The Case for Partisanship

Bipartisanship might not be dead. But it is on life support. And it’s long past time we pulled the plug.
Luther Martin
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For Constitution Day, Let's Toast the Losers of the Convention

Anti-federalist Luther Martin's agenda failed at the Constitutional Convention, but his criticisms of the Founders may still resonate with us today.
Collage of strips of famous African American faces in a mechanical press.

Afropessimism and Its Discontents

A guide for the perplexed, the puzzled, and the politically confused.
William Burnet meeting with Native American leadership

The Native American Roots of the U.S. Constitution

The Iroquois, Shawnee, Cherokee, and other political formations generally separated military and civil leadership and guarded certain personal freedoms.

9/11 Forever

Far from a relic of the past, September 11 continues to normalize previously unimaginable forms of state-sanctioned barbarity.
Painting of George Washington on horseback, leading troops through the countryside to squash the Whiskey Rebellion.

Examining Public Opinion during the Whiskey Rebellion

This armed uprising in 1794, over taxation by the fledgling new government, threatened to destroy the new union within six years of the Constitution’s ratification.
George W. Bush giving speech

In the Shadow of 9/11

Two new books argue that the War on Terror changed American politics, but what if the sources of its violence were already long present in the country?
‘The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site’; cartoon by Victor Gillam from Judge magazine, March 22, 1890

Whose Freedom?

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.
Photo of Union commanders.

The Anti-Lee

George Henry Thomas, southerner in blue.
RFK speaking at the Ambassador Hotel in LA, moments before he was shot on June 5, 1968.

How Robert F. Kennedy’s Assassination Derailed American Politics

The idealistic presidential candidate was on the verge of seizing control of the 1968 race just as Sirhan Sirhan’s bullet struck.
Six generations of Black women, portrait taken by R.W. Harrison in Selma, AL, 1893

Black Women and Civil War Pensions

At the intersection of gender and racial discrimination, Black widows struggled to get the compensation they deserved.
Art sculpture "House" by Rachael Whiteread, 1993 (a concrete casting of the inside of a Victorian house).

Monuments for the Interim Twenty-Four Thousand Years.

An account of the long-lasting effects of nuclear energy in the US.
A cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Johnson as a king and the race riots that occurred at a Radical Republican convention in New Orleans.

‘The Failed Promise’ Review: The Mad King and the Lost Cause

Frederick Douglass and Republican legislators had high hopes for Andrew Johnson—but ended up impeaching him.

The Rise of the Elite Anti-Intellectual

For decades, “common sense” has been a convenient framing for conservative ideas. The label hides a more complicated picture.
Picketers from National Women's Party

She Asked President Woodrow Wilson For 22 Suffrage "Favors." She Got 21.

Wilson became a great supporter of the 19th Amendment, but only because he worked alongside a woman who spoke his language.
Donald Trump and Greg Abbott on a stage.
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The GOP is Reviving the Old History of Blaming Outsiders for Disease

But the evidence never backed it up before, and it doesn’t support such claims today either.
Charles Koch

The Radical Capitalist Behind the Critical Race Theory Furor

How a dark-money mogul bankrolled an astroturf backlash.
Collage cramming extra seats into the House of Representatives.

How The House Got Stuck At 435 Seats

After 110 years, a look at the benefits — and drawbacks — to expanding the chamber.
President Obama in the Oval Office.

Pictures at a Restoration

On Pete Souza’s Obama.
Chinese miners in California

The Anti-Asian Roots of Today’s Anti-Immigrant Politics

Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.
U.S. Capitol riot

Echo Chambers

Parallels between the American Revolution and the U.S. Capitol riot.