Excerpts

Curated stories from around the web.
New on Bunk

The Greatest Upset in Quiz Show History

Agnes Scott vs. Princeton, GE College Bowl, 1966.
"Judge in chambers swearing in a new citizen" (1910).

Second-Class Citizens?

A history of denaturalization in the US.

Pride and Prejudice? The Americans Who Fly the Confederate Flag

A listening tour in Mississippi asks flag supporters why they still support a symbol that represents pain, division and difficult history.

People Keep Shooting Up The Sign Commemorating Emmett Till’s Murder

It has been a target of vandals ever since it was dedicated.
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NAFTA Policy Reveals a Distinction Between Trump, Ross Perot, and Patrick Buchanan

Trump has echoed the NAFTA policy of his politically upstart forbearers—mostly.
View of San Francisco from the Bay.

How Could 'The Most Successful Place on Earth' Get So Much Wrong?

A new book conjures the complexity of the Bay Area and the perils of its immense, uneven wealth.

When California Was the Bear Republic

The story behind the iconic flag.
FBI piracy warning

How 1960s Film Pirates Sold Movies Before the FBI Came Knocking

The FBI storms a suspect's property, guns drawn. The crime? Film piracy.

The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock

The corporate radical who organized Visa wants to dis-organize your company.

A Look Back at a 1939 Pro-Nazi Rally and the Protesters Who Organized Against It

Seventy-eight years ago, protesters and white supremacists clashed outside of Madison Square Garden.

The Strange Decline of H.L. Mencken

No American writer has wielded such influence. So why is he so little known today?
Diagram of a Spencer rifle.

From Spencer Rifles to M-16s: A History Of The Weapons US Troops Wield In War

Muzzleloaders have evolved into smart-style automatic firearms in just 150 years.

The Wild Weird World of American Roadside Attractions

From "real" mermaids in Florida to the world's largest ball of twine, pulling off the highway is more fun than you would think.

One Man's Quest to Uncover the True Costs of Jim Crow

"It’s going to change how we think about Texas history and how we think about ourselves and how we built this state."

To Have and to Hold

Griswold v. Connecticut became about privacy; what if it had been about equality?

For 60 Years, This Powerful Conservative Group Has Worked to Crush Labor

Now the Janus decision has helped push the National Right to Work Committee and its sister organizations closer to that goal.
LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

How LBJ Saved the Civil Rights Act

Fifty years later, new accounts of its fraught passage reveal the era's real hero—and it isn’t the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump, The Resistance, and the Limits of Normcore Politics

There’s no returning to a golden age of American democracy that never existed.

Defining Privacy—and Then Getting Rid of It

The beginnings of the end of private life in the late nineteenth century.

Will America's Schools Ever Be Desegregated?

Though there are practical obstacles to school integration, it's not an unreachable ideal.

Court-Packing is the Democrats’ Nuclear Option for the Supreme Court

Why an FDR plan from the 1930s is suddenly popular again.

Protesting Law Enforcement Is as Old as America Itself

Had British authorities and their soldiers exercised de-escalation tactics, would the United States exist today?

The White Man, Unburdened

How Charles Murray stopped worrying and learned to love racism.

How Conservatives Won the Battle Over the Courts 

The right has demonstrated that winning this kind of institutional fight takes years and requires a ruthless disposition.
Protesters with KKK hoods and Goldwater signs.
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How the Right Became Addicted to Conspiracies

The conservative conspiracy lit that paved the way for Donald Trump.

Democrats Would Be Better Off Today If Bill Clinton Had Never Been President

A look at the Clinton blunders that continue to damage his party today.

How a Pivotal Voting Rights Act Case Broke America

In the five years since the landmark decision, the Supreme Court has set the stage for a new era of white hegemony.

The Justice Department Is Reinvestigating the 1955 Slaying of Emmett Till

His brutal killing shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement.
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The Real Reason the Trump Administration Went to War Over Breast-Feeding

On breast-feeding, Trump is following the Reagan formula.

This Man is an Island

How the Key West we know today became a reflection of one man’s campy sense of style.

"Though Declared to be American Citizens"

The Colored Convention Movement, black citizenship, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Struggle Over the Meaning of the 14th Amendment Continues

The fight over the 150-year old language in the Constitution is a battle for the very heart of the American republic.

The Urgency of a Third Reconstruction

The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment marked a turning point in U.S. history. Yet 150 years later, its promises remain unfulfilled.

An Irrevocable Separation

When the government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the welfare of their two boys was a secondary concern.

My Dad and Henry Ford

My father was pro-Jewish propaganda when the country had an anti-semitism problem - he even met the man that inspired much of the hate. But is history repeating itself?

The Disappearing Story of the Black Homesteaders Who Pioneered The West

Once-vibrant African American homesteading communities are falling to ruin.

The President Without a Party

The trials of Jimmy Carter.

What Does It Mean to Give David Petraeus the Floor?

Some historians worry that giving the former general an invitation to keynote means giving him a pulpit.

The Partners of Greenwich Village

Did the census recognize gay couples in 1940?

The Lesson of the Great War

A century after the guns fell silent, the United States risks replicating the errors of the past.
Manuscript of the Fourteenth Amendment.

We Should Embrace the Ambiguity of the 14th Amendment

A hundred and fifty years after its ratification, some of its promises remain unfulfilled—but one day it may still be interpreted anew.

In the Trump Era, America Desperately Needs a Great Movie About Nuclear Apocalypse

If we want to avoid nuclear war, we'd better start imagining it again.

Justice Among the Jell-O Recipes: The Feminist History of Food Journalism

The food pages of newspapers were probably some of the first feminist writing many women read.

This 60-Year-Old Novel About Sexual Harassment Was Ahead Of Its Time

"The Best of Everything" outlined the dynamics and the costs of sexual harassment, decades before anyone talked openly about it.
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

Hamilton, Madison, and the Paradox at America’s Heart

The tension between nationalist ambitions and republican principles goes all the way back to our nation’s founding.

The Big Picture: The Right Type of Citizenship

Citizens pledge their allegiance to a nation that reciprocates with a pledge of allegiance to them. What does that look like?

Jefferson and Hemings: How Negotiation Under Slavery Was Possible

In navigating lives of privation and brutality, enslaved people haggled, often daily, for liberties small and large.

The Right to Have Rights

Hannah Arendt’s conception of human rights has much to say to our contemporary moment.

How Corporations Won Their Civil Rights

The Court got it right—but it's not a conclusion we should be entirely comfortable with.

Citizens: 150 Years of the 14th Amendment

In 1868, black activists had already been promoting birthright as the basis of their national belonging for nearly half a century.
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