Excerpts

An oral history of how Black Flag, Bad Brains, and other hardcore acts reclaimed punk from white supremacists.

For Meaghan Good, the disappeared are still out here, you just have to know where to look.

As King’s attention drifted to the problems of the urban north, his critiques came to focus on the economic system itself.

There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr.

But it’s seriously dated. And there's another tradition he could draw on.

The Experimental City revisits the plan for a futuristic Minnesota city that would solve urban problems.

Leslie Gelb supervised the team that compiled the Pentagon Papers. He explains what Steven Spielberg's new film gets wrong.

Why so many of the people who quote Emma Lazarus’s Petrarchan sonnet miss its true meaning.

The designers of the quota system at least tried to hide their racism.

"Able-bodied” doesn't always mean “able to work.”

Thousands of priceless images, books, documents, and more are now at your fingertips.

SNCC staff photographer Danny Lyon recounts his experiences in the early days of the civil rights movement.

King was roundly denounced for his stances against the Vietnam War and injustices north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Ryan Zinke isn’t the first Interior secretary to attract controversy.

Elections in the late 1860s gave birth to real, if short-lived, interracial democracy—the likes of which America had never seen.

Fact-checking the lyrics of Miranda's new song.

"It's still white history. And no amount of casting people of color disguises the fact that they're erasing people of color from the actual narrative."

Keeping the Irish poor out of America helped shape our restrictive immigration policies.

Historian Thomas S. Kidd examines the tension between Benjamin Franklin's deism and his frequent religious rhetoric.

A biography of Stevie Nicks does little to dispel the magic.

Doctors then, as now, overprescribed the painkiller to patients in need, and then, as now, government policy had a distinct bias.

A new biography of Lucy Parsons makes it clear that the activist deserves attention apart from her more well-known husband.

Trump's language might be uniquely vulgar but his ideas are part of a long trend.

Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its climax in the Age of Revolution.

When the Long Hot Summer came to Wisconsin, the reality of race relations was impossible to ignore.

The history of blue jeans has been whitewashed.

And some other things about the country that Donald Trump doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know.

The canonical image of Martin Luther King Jr. neglects many of his most important intellectual, ethical, and political critiques.

James Baldwin's dispatch from MLK's funeral foreshadowed an America we may never escape.

On Haiti, Donald Trump sounds a lot like Thomas Jefferson.

Why the policies of the Federal Reserve were a central focus for the civil rights movement.

The 20th century produced monuments to a false consensus—can the 21st century create a more representative commemorative sphere?

If you're wondering how Trump happened, all you have to do is let Pat Buchanan beguile you with a history no one else can tell.

We are a nation of immigrants and refugees. Yet we always fear who is coming next.

Fighting over immigration is central to the American story.

How one black woman's campaign for justice after a rape by six white men shaped the struggle for equality—and the #MeToo movement.

“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

An explanation of the provision that allows for the removal of a president who is deemed by others to be unable to serve.

Outrage over the revolt spurred the U.S. to deliver on a promise of the revolution.

In 1939, a refugee ban kept 20,000 Jewish children out of the U.S.

The history of immigrants in the U.S. teaches that no amount of assimilation will protect you when an alien requires conjuring.

A semester-length guide for educators and citizens seeking to understand the history and meaning of immigration in the U.S.

In this 1915 letter to Congress, President Wilson explains his decision to reject new immigration restrictions.

"You're taking over our country" echoes long-held narratives and has renewed prominence in conservative discourse.

The fears that were conjured by nativists 80 years ago are chillingly similar to what we're hearing today.

He was the Chinese-American cook who became the father of ‘birthright citizenship.’

Donald Trump combines the instincts of a reality-TV star with the politics of a hundred-and-seventy-year-old nativist movement.

Fear of diminishing broodstock got the gals going outdoors.

In the late 19th century, statesmen feared that Catholics were something less than civilized (and less than white).

If radicalism meant insecurity, and immigration meant radicalism, the government's course was clear.