Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk
Empty New York City subway car.

How the NY Post and the NY Daily News Turned Victims Into Criminals

The role of tabloid journalism in shaping the racist narrative of the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting.
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Folger's "A chart of the Gulf Stream" (1768).

Prelude to a Revolution, Part One

How maps, scarcity, and severe weather combined to shape the new American Republic—and a revolution we’re still waiting on.
Recruitment poster for textile mill workers. (Image: Lowell National Historical Park.)

What Is the History of American Progress without a History of Its Workers?

How the Lowell mill working girls are being remembered in Trump's America.
Barstow-to-Vegas dirt bike racers on a trail.

The Dirt Bikers Who Went to War on Desert Conservation

Today’s anti-environmentalists are following the tracks of the ‘Phantom Duck’ and the Barstow-to-Vegas race.
A worker assembling an automobile.

Trump Is Tearing Apart the North American Auto Industry

In the 1960s, the Auto Pact deal integrated the US and Canada’s auto sectors. Donald Trump’s trade war will all but guarantee its unraveling.
The spot where Ona Judge's story was removed, now filled with protest notes stressing the importance of history.

Martha Washington’s Enslaved Maid Ona Judge Made a Daring Escape to Freedom

The National Park Service has erased her story from Philadelphia exhibit.
I.C.E. Parking Sign on a gate of a detention center.

The Making of the Deportation Machine

The pillars aren’t new. They were built over decades, with bipartisan consensus.
Revolutionaries storming the Bastille.

Passage To A Better World

The meaning of “revolution” has shifted between feared upheaval and hopeful progress, and its promises often bring violence and mixed results.
Fiorello La Guardia speaking in 1933 in East Harlem.

Lucky Corner

How Fiorello La Guardia and a popular front of radicals and reformers transformed New York City.
"Interrogation II," painting by Leon Golub depicting men surrounding a masked, bound, naked prisoner.

After the Earthquakes

The fundamental problem of the present is complicity.

Of Course The Country Was Stolen

It should not be controversial to acknowledge the hideous injustice done to Native Americans through colonization.
Students on a campus quad, overlaid with a pattern of crisscrossed campus walking paths.

How Elite Colleges Aided Censorship During the Red Scares

Powerful organizations during the Red Scares crafted a world where “academic freedom” was conditional on political allegiance.
Race, Labor, and Statues

Race, Labor, and Statues

What is “the process” for taking down Confederate statues? There isn’t one.
Three identical photos of Thomas Jeffersonn, under blue, purple, and green backgrounds.

Thomas Jefferson Couldn’t Resist the Allure of Fame

The Founding Father desired to be remembered by history.
Up with People halftime show at Super Bowl XX.

How Up with People Paved a Super Bowl Path for Bad Bunny

Once upon a time, a group of 600 young adults smiled as one, danced in pastel outfits and sang about positivity during the Super Bowl halftime show.
View of downtown Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh’s Fight For Fair Housing

A brief history of Pittsburgh’s first fair housing law.
Black soldier with a machine gun.

Fighting Abroad and At Home: Remembering the Experiences of Black Vietnam Veterans

The long history of Black heroism and service—and the current efforts to erase it.
Rembrandt painting of the "Head of Christ"

Never Again, Once Again

Invoking the memory of Jewish persecution to denounce the assault on immigrants today is not an offense but a moral imperative.
Illustration of four soldiers from the eighteenth century holding weapons.

In Response to the ICE Killings, Another Bad Use of Our Founding History

An examination of Alex Pretti’s killing by ICE to challenge the idea that the Second Amendment safeguards liberty and deters government tyranny.

Bad Bunny’s Stunning Redefinition of “America”

His joyous, internationalist, worker-centered vision was a declaration of war against Trumpism.
Black and white illustration of the Confederate prison camp in Anderson­ville, Georgia, in 1865.

Deadlier Than Gettysburg

How the cruelty of the Confederacy’s prison camps gave rise to the rules of war.
Washington monument as a candle in a United States-shaped cake.

America’s 250th Isn’t Just a Birthday

Our reticence to name the civic occasion we are marking this year points to a deeper uncertainty about how to relate to American history.
Lunch atop a Skyscraper

A Seat At The Top: Book Review Of "Lunch On A Beam"

Chronicling the history behind the famous photograph.
Viola "Mother" Fletcher.

What America Lost When It Lost Mother Fletcher

With nearly all of the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre now dead, the country must find other ways to rectify its wrongs.
Black men living in a shanty during the Pullman Car strike.

How One Black Labor Union Changed American History

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters launched a union drive against a railroad giant, forever entwining the causes of labor and black civil rights.
A woman turns down a dapper ‘snake’ in a ‘vinegar valentine’ from the 1870s.

Return to the 19th-Century Custom of the Spicy ‘Vinegar Valentine’

Victorians found a way to anonymously tell people they didn’t like exactly how they felt.
Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln As You’ve Never Known Him

Matthew Pinsker reveals how the 16th president carefully built a partisan base essential to his rise.
Rod of Asclepius broken into pieces.

How America Got So Sick

The health of a nation reflects the health of a democracy.
Pedestrians crosses the street in Kansas City, MO, 1962

Kansas City Invented the Crime of ‘Jaywalking,’ Leading the National War Against Pedestrians

In 1912, Kansas City became the first U.S. city to arrest jaywalkers. Pushed by industry propaganda, it helped shift streets toward cars, not people.
Video game cartridges.

The Console Wars, As Told By '90s Nintendo And Sega Advertisements

On the adolescent aesthetics that the federal government is co-opting to promote ICE.
Cartoon depiction of an Black owned oyster cellar in the 1830s with drunk patrons.

Equity on the Rocks: Using the Past to Stir Up New Possibilities

Discussion of how liquor licensing has shaped Black economic opportunity and equity from antebellum oyster cellars to modern Boston.
The Stars and Stripes and the Tricolor March Side by Side Through the Arch of Triumph, Paris, Sept. 19, 1927

Over There, Again

The American Legion at home and abroad.
Lithograph showing a man swooning and a woman in the witness box at the Salem witch trials.

The Medical Doctor Who Triggered the Salem Witch Trials of 1692

There is little historical information about Dr. Griggs, but what little there is, is significant.
Salmon P. Chase

Who Owns the Founding? Akhil Reed Amar’s "Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution"

Politics keeps refighting the Founding: Amar says liberals inherit originalism, but that tale smooths 19th-century contradictions.
W.E.B. DuBois and James McCune Smith.

How W.E.B. DuBois and James McCune Smith Helped Combat Medical Racism in America

From McCune Smith to Du Bois, Black scholars used data to debunk scientific racism and prove health inequality was social, not biological.
The body of assassinated Italian politician Giacomo Matteotti being transported.

Historical Parallels

Discussing effective historical analogies for the second Trump administration.
Three young kids standing in a European town

Visiting the Old Country by Way of Kew Gardens, Queens

My grandmother lived in Kew Gardens, Queens. It was just an average New York commute, but for me it meant stepping out of one reality and into another.

Playing the Grinch at America’s 250th Birthday Party

How do we celebrate America's 250th anniversary as ICE and the Border Patrol threaten and abuse ordinary Americans?
Pro-choice rally outside the Supreme Court.

The Theology of Roe

Far from the bastion of secularism many people today assume it to be, the landmark abortion ruling enacted the values of liberal mainline Protestantism.
A U.S. Navy strike group enters the Caribbean Sea.

The Path to the Trump Doctrine

From Syria to Lebanon to Gaza, the coercion central to the new regime has been incubated in the Middle East.
Bernie Goetz standing in front of cars in the city.

How the Bernie Goetz Shootings Explain the Trump Era

A notorious event in 1984 divided New Yorkers in ways that feel extremely familiar four decades later.
The Lincoln Memorial obscured with a Trump banner.

Trump's War on History

As America’s 250th anniversary approaches, the president wants to control the country’s future by bulldozing its past.
Confrontation between ICE and protestors in Chicago.

Accountability for ICE and CBP

However bad you think the corruption and misconduct at ICE and CBP is — the reality is far far worse.
Sketch of Samuel Green.

Samuel Green Freed Himself and Others From Slavery. Then He Was Imprisoned Over Owning a Book

He covertly assisted conductors on the Underground Railroad, but it was his possession of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” turned that him into an abolitionist hero.
Nicolás Maduro.

When Did Everything Become Terrorism?

How actual terrorists like Trump and ICE have expanded the definition of terrorism to include everyone they don’t like.
The White House in Washington, DC. (Volodymyr Tverdokhlib/Shutterstock)

Historical Perspective on the Unitary Executive

Article II of the Constitution offered significant concessions to those who preferred a more plural executive.
General George Washington before the Battle of Trenton.

Arms and the Common Man

The founders distrusted standing armies and favored militias. But over time, the Second Amendment shifted from militia defense to broad individual gun rights.
NYPD officers in front of an American flag sculpture.

The Police Were a Mistake

Law enforcement agencies have become the standing armies that the Founders feared.
The U.S. Marine Corps marching band plays during a ceremony in 2004.

American Music, American War

A roundtable discussion about David Suisman’s “Instrument of War.”
An early rating scale in education by James Burt Miner.

Why the HR Office Works for the Boss

And more on how the first "Big Men on Campus," Herbert Hoover, and friends, kept charge in the university, in the workplace, and on the national stage.
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