Power

One of the most powerful phrases in the Civil Rights Act is often viewed as a malicious joke that backfired. But its entrance into law was far more savvy.

“I was shocked to learn that Hispanic conservatives celebrate Cortes’s arrival in Mexico.”

A combination of historical surpluses—the afterlives of slavery, of the deranged presidency—has raised the stakes in the present struggle.

The idea of a modern nation is both confusing and conflicting. And as the world confronts the current global health crisis, its weaknesses become more apparent.

The history of American policing shows that it was designed to eat up resources and subjugate the civilian population.

After the Whig president’s shocking death, his vice president and successor proved to be a Whig by expedience only

Lessons from Frederick Douglass on the tortured relationship between protest and change.

Militarized police forces laid the groundwork for using troops to quell protest.

The history of using militarized force domestically.

On the origins of the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to call on federal troops and state militias to put down insurrections.

Trump campaigns like Richard Nixon and George Wallace, but in reality, he is Lyndon Johnson: a man who has lost control of the machine.

The Insurrection Act of 1807, which Trump has threatened to invoke, is the linchpin of several iconic events in African American history.

The father of the country was a team player who had no interest in displays of hyper-masculinity.

“Big money alone does not fully explain the Republican embrace of the gospel of more.”

As a historian, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the fallout from Watts and other rebellions.

Could Donald Trump really rival James Buchanan?

Reflections on the COVID crisis from Reconstruction.

Two new books make the case against the Electoral College.

A conversation with John Nichols about the night in 1944 that altered the trajectory of the Democratic Party.

Backlash dynamics are one of the defining patterns of the country’s history.

“The idea that the federal government would be providing emergency relief and emergency work was extraordinary,” one sociologist said. “And people liked it.”

In the 1930s, Americans responded to economic calamity by creating a richer and more equitable society. We can do it again.

What 'the forgotten man of American conservatism' has to say about current debates on the right.

The Kent State shootings further widened the chasm among a citizenry divided over the Vietnam War.

The Combahee River Collective and E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie agree that the wealthy and powerful will hijack activist energies for their own ends.

In 1988, Jesse Jackson ran for president on a platform that included universalist policies like single-payer. His success terrified establishment Democrats.

How did the struggle for emancipation become a mass politics?

The shootings at Kent State and Jackson State at 50 years later.

Historians have been too much the ideological allies of Progressivism to permit themselves to see its master flaw.

History is not kind to those who divide and dither.