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Tamara Lanier

Harvard Relinquishes Photographs of Enslaved People in Historic Settlement

Tamara Lanier, who sued the school over daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors held in its museum, called the outcome “a turning point in American history.”
by Valentina Di Liscia via Hyperallergic on May 28, 2025
The insolvent brothers giving queer bail

Insolvent Brothers: The Generals Ethan and Ira Allen

How could two renowned, high-ranking men of the American Revolution have fallen into such dire straits that they feared the loss of all they worked for?
by Gary Shattuck via Journal of the American Revolution on May 22, 2025
Civil rights lawyers including Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley.

Trump's Attack on Lawyers and Law Firms Takes a Page Out of the Southern 1950s Playbook

American authoritarians fear the uniquely American power of litigation.
by Sherrilyn Ifill via Sherrilyn's Newsletter on March 24, 2025
Alice Rhinelander surrounded by well-dressed family members awaiting the jury verdict in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander.

How an Interracial Marriage Sparked One of the Most Scandalous Trials of the Roaring Twenties

Under pressure from his wealthy family, Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander claimed that his new wife, Alice Beatrice Jones, had tricked him into believing she was white.
by Bryan Greene via Smithsonian on November 20, 2024
Myisha Eatmon.

Break Every Chain

How black plaintiffs in the Jim Crow South sought justice.
by Max J. Krupnick via Harvard Magazine on January 5, 2024
Mountain with both living and dead trees.
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Did Montana Violate Its Residents’ Right To a Clean Environment?

A new lawsuit builds on 50 years of history in environmental activism.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via Made By History on June 12, 2023
Armed police officers searching Black men during the riot in Columbia, Tennessee.

Front-Page News

How the NAACP made the police riot in Columbia, Tennessee national news.
by Tom Hundley via Oxford American on March 28, 2023
Emissions from Union Carbide’s Ferro-Alloy Plant, Charleston, West Virginia, May 1973

The Lost Promise of Environmental Rights

As environmental rights seem on the verge of a comeback, it’s worth remembering why they once seemed so promising, and why that promise remains unfulfilled.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on March 15, 2023
President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

"What Are They Hiding?"

Group sues Biden and National Archives over delay of JFK assassination records.
by Marc Caputo via NBC News on October 19, 2022
A crowd of Japanese Americans behind the barbed wire of an internment camp.
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How a 1944 Supreme Court Ruling on Internment Camps Led to a Reckoning

An admission of wrongdoing from the U.S. government came later, but a Supreme Court ruling had lasting impact.
via Retro Report on October 18, 2022
Cup of McDonald's coffee
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The Misunderstood McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit

Stella Liebeck was vilified when she was awarded millions after spilling McDonald's coffee in her lap. But the facts told another story.
via Retro Report on October 28, 2019

How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools

At a time when the US was divided on questions of gender, Alice de Rivera decided that she was fed up with her lousy high school.
by Laurie Gwen Shapiro via The New Yorker on January 26, 2019

We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

Millions of American children were placed in orphanages. Some didn’t make it out alive.
by Christine Kenneally via BuzzFeed News on August 27, 2018
Lady Justice statue.

The Untold Story of Ordinary Black Southerners’ Litigation During the Jim Crow Era

Between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, about a thousand black southerners sued whites who had wronged them.
by Melissa Milewski via OUPblog on March 27, 2018

'He Brutalized for You'

How Joseph McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn became Donald Trump’s mentor.
by Michael Kruse via Politico Magazine on April 8, 2016
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Not Just the Dog-Eared Pages

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
by Anthony Aycock via HNN on June 3, 2025
Three Black men having a conversation.

Recovering the Forgotten Past of Black Legal Lives

Dylan C. Penningroth challenges nearly every aspect of our traditional understanding of civil rights history.
by Ajay K. Mehrotra via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 3, 2025
The L.A. Eight, in 1987.

The Last Time Pro-Palestinian Activists Faced Deportation

Mahmoud Khalil’s case is eerily similar to that of the L.A. Eight when students were targeted not because of any criminal activity but because of their speech.
by David Cole via The New Yorker on March 18, 2025
Poster reading "Basta Buitres," or "Enough Vultures," calling for Argentina to unite against the United States.

How the US Courts Rewrote the Rules of International Trade

How the American legal system created an economic environment that subordinated the entire world to domestic business interests.
by Brett Christophers via The Nation on March 3, 2025
Richard Nixon giving a press conference.
partner

The Playbook for Stopping Trump From Shuttering Agencies

Presidents can't shutter an agency Congress created by statute. Only Congress has this power.
by Ryan LaRochelle via Made By History on February 12, 2025

I Pledge . . . Allegiance?

American law says schools must honor the Pledge of Allegiance. Schools may have other plans.
by Maggie Phillips via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on February 4, 2025
A drawing of a slave revolt on a ship.

Rare Portraits Reveal the Humanity of the Slaves Who Revolted on the Amistad

William H. Townsend drew the rebels as they stood trial, leaving behind an invaluable record.
by Kate McMahon via The Conversation on February 3, 2025
Drawings of Sadie James and Charles Page over a map of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The True Story of Tulsa’s Forgotten Antihero, Sadie James

And a walk downtown in search of her saloon, the Bucket of Blood.
by Russell Cobb via The Pickup on January 23, 2025
A still from the Apprentice of Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn inside a car.

The Apprenticeship of Donald Trump

A new film examines Trump's formative years under the tutelage of Roy Cohn.
by David Klion via The Nation on October 21, 2024
A portrait of Major Ridge, an older Cherokee man.
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Revealed Through a Mountain of Paperwork

As the nation’s highest court debated Native sovereignty, I was in the archives, uncovering family stories entwined with those debates.
by Rebecca Nagle via HNN on September 24, 2024
Political cartoon of clothed animals and Anthony Comstock bathing clothed, and cowering at underwear in a store window.

The History and Legacy of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Laws

As the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes to revive the Comstock Act, this seven-part forum explores the Act’s influence on American life.
by Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Allison K. Lange, Kimberly A. Hamlin, Nicholas L. Syrett, Cathleen D. Cahill, Magdalene Zier, Andrew Wender Cohen via SHGAPE Blog on September 24, 2024
Don Baker, holding sign that says "March On Washington October 14, 1979" with Texas silhouette.

The Dallas Teacher, Navy Vet, and Devout Christian Who Fought to Overturn Texas’s Sodomy Law

Unlikely activist Don Baker scored a landmark win for gay rights in Texas 42 years ago this week.
by Bruce Selcraig via Texas Monthly on August 14, 2024
Collage of civil rights lawyers and school segregation headlines.

In Search of the Broad Highway

Revisiting Meredith v. Fair, we get the inside story of how critical race theory was developed in the years after Brown v. Board of Education.
by Dave Tell via The Hedgehog Review on July 26, 2024
Evelyn Nesbit Thaw dodging a camera, 1909.
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Overexposed

What happened to privacy when Americans gained easy access to cameras in the Gilded Age?
by Sohini Desai via HNN on July 2, 2024
"The President's House" (The White House), in the nineteenth century, print by Isidore Laurent Deroy after Augustus Kollner, 1848.

Can the Republic Survive Corrupt Presidents?

The Founders knew that executive power was vital but dangerous in any republic.
by Richard Samuelson via Law & Liberty on June 27, 2024
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