Excerpts

Many are looking to history for clues about how to understand the evolving moment. Here's what to know.

The founders of modern policing quelled foreign uprisings. ‘Demilitarizing’ police will be harder than taking away their tanks.

It is time to remove the names of traitors like Benning and Bragg from our country’s most important military instillations.

The way Americans have long discussed racism is a huge part of the problem.

To understand the slogan's meaning, consider the words of Martin Luther King, who saw the riots of the 1960s as not revolutionary enough.

Heather Ann Thompson explains what’s changed and what has stayed the same.

A Review of "Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square."

Two dozen experts consider the George Floyd protests in light of protests past.

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

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

A new book considers the mid-century authors who were – and weren't – willing to have their work deployed in the service of the Cold War.

To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction.

The discovery of a lost shipwreck has pitted treasure hunters and archaeologists against each other, raising questions about who should control sunken riches.

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

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

The history of using militarized force domestically.

African Americans and the mobilization of the Confederate capital.

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

The nationwide protests against police killings have been called un-American by critics, but rebellion has always been used to defend liberty.

Sports, politics, and civic identity in modern Philadelphia.

Why Southerners protesting structural racism in the criminal justice system have turned time and again to the monuments in their communities.

Trump echoed a former Miami police chief’s anti-black words and animus.

The lessons of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and its aftermath still resonate.

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

Robin D.G. Kelley on the predecessors to Antifa.

How local prosecutors' offices have become stepping stones to higher office.

“¿DEFACEMENT?,” Inspired by the 1983 Police Murder of Michael Stewart.

How the NYPD and its conservative allies have used fear and race baiting to curtail attempts to limit policing power in the city.

A proper understanding of urban rebellion depends on our ability to interpret it not as a wave of criminality, but as political violence.

Like everything else in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, American food has become almost unrecognizable overnight.

Could Donald Trump really rival James Buchanan?

How lynching images are testimonies to the inaction of the white justice system.

Why did the priest and the choir singer die, and what was the nature of their love?

We can only understand the left’s present dilemmas by seeing them in light of the conflicted legacy of the New Deal.

Reflections on the COVID crisis from Reconstruction.

A missing pilot and her poems.

How Titus Andronicus drew on Civil War lore to frame contemporary social divides.

Violence perpetrated by cops doesn’t simply boil down to individual bad actors—it’s also a systemic, judicial failing.

Edward White’s new monthly column, “Off Menu,” serves up lesser-told stories of chefs cooking in interesting times.

The Founders didn’t believe that broad delegations of legislative power violated the Constitution, but conservative originalists keep insisting otherwise.

How the politics of American imperialism often intersected with calls for women's suffrage.

The charivari (or shivaree) was a ritual in which people on the lower rungs of a community called out neighbors who violated social and sexual norms.

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

How the history of parking in America highlights its societal inequalities.

Maya Lin recounts the experience of creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

On the stories and landscapes the Federal Writers’ Project left unexplored.

Claims that the programs adopted in the 1930s lengthened the Great Depression don’t hold up.

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

Comparison to Nazism and fascism distracts us from how we made Trump over decades.

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