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Policing the Colony: From the American Revolution to Ferguson

King George's tax collectors abused police powers to fill his coffers. Sound familiar?
by Chris Hayes via The Nation on March 29, 2017
A photo collage of African American activists.

Black Activists Began Traveling to Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”
by Nia T. Evans via Mother Jones on January 15, 2024
Book covers of America on Fire and In Defense of Looting

The Ballot or the Brick: On Elizabeth Hinton’s ‘America on Fire’ and Vicky Osterweil’s ‘In Defense of Looting’

Two books trace anti-police uprisings to the urban riots of the Civil Rights era. But as people took to the streets in 2020, why did so few pick up a brick?
by David Helps via MR Online on August 10, 2021
A protester holds their hands up in front of a police car in Ferguson, Missouri, on November 25, 2014.

How Being “Woke” Lost Its Meaning

How a Black activist watchword got co-opted in the culture war.
by Aja Romano via Vox on October 9, 2020
African American man leaning on his car, by a wall spray painted with the words "let's remember McDuffie"

The Long, Painful History of Racial Unrest

A lethal incident of police brutality in Miami in 1979 offers just one of countless examples of the reality generations of African Americans have faced.
by Ashley Howard via Smithsonian on August 28, 2020
People at a Black Lives Matter protest

The Power of Black Lives Matter

How the movement that’s changing America was built and where it goes next.
by Jamil Smith via Rolling Stone on June 16, 2020

Is Capitalism Racist?

A scholar depicts white supremacy as the economic engine of American history.
by Nicholas Lemann via The New Yorker on May 18, 2020
Demonstrators at a Black Lives Matter rally.

Five Years Later, Do Black Lives Matter?

Five years since its inception, a look at what the Black Lives Matter movement accomplished and the important work it left unfinished.
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via Jacobin on October 9, 2019

The Canine Terror

Since slavery, dogs have been used to intimidate and control African Americans.
by Tyler D. Parry, Charlton W. Yingling via Jacobin on May 19, 2016
Police officers patrolling the streets at the start of the Birmingham Campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963. Frank Rockstroh/Getty

The Police Dog As Weapon of Racial Terror

Police K-9 units in the United States emerged during the Civil Rights era. This was not a coincidence.
by Matthew Wills, Tyler Wall via JSTOR Daily on February 9, 2023
Illustration of Cedric Robinson by Joe Ciardiello.

Cedric Robinson’s Radical Democracy

Rejecting the resignation of the 1970s and ’80s, Robinson found in the disinvested ruins of the city a new egalitarian form of politics.
by Jared Loggins via The Nation on April 18, 2022
A picture of armed militias

What the Term “Gun Culture” Misses About White Supremacy

The rise of tactical gun culture among civilians reveals a new front in the U.S. battle against nativist authoritarianism.
by Chad Kautzer via Boston Review on December 17, 2021
Formal portrait photo of Destin Jenkins.

Public Thinker: Destin Jenkins on Breaking Bonds

“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”
by Destin Jenkins, Hannah Appel via Public Books on December 13, 2021
Newark protesters and National Guard

A Warning Ignored

America did exactly what the Kerner Commission on the urban riots of the mid-1960s advised against, and fifty years later reaped the consequences it predicted.
by Jelani Cobb via New York Review of Books on July 29, 2021
Children's coloring sheets of overturned police cars.

Magic Actions

Looking back on the George Floyd rebellion.
by Tobi Haslett via n+1 on July 21, 2021
The construction of the famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.

The City That Embodies the United States’ Contradictions

In the history of St. Louis, we find both a radical and reactionary past—and a more hopeful future too.
by Robert Greene II via The Nation on May 17, 2021
A still from "Judas and the Black Messiah."

The Unsettling Message of ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

The new crime thriller about a magnetic leader of the Black Panther Party is a sharp criticism of the FBI’s surveillance of social movements past and present.
by Elizabeth Hinton via The Atlantic on February 13, 2021
Digital art with "Help Wanted Sign", square with word "Tuna" and bottle

Solidarity Now

An experiment in oral history of the present.
by Wen Stephenson via The Baffler on January 15, 2021

The Civil Rights Era was Supposed to Drastically Change America. It Didn’t.

From covid-19 to the 2020 election, the specter of America’s racist history influences many aspects of our lives.
by Stefan M. Bradley via Washington Post on December 23, 2020

For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority

Not since Reconstruction has there been such an opportunity for the advancement of racial justice.
by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on September 8, 2020

The Wages of Whiteness

One idea inherited from 1960s radicalism is that of “white privilege,” a protean concept invoked to explain wealth, political power, and even cognition.
by Hari Kunzru via New York Review of Books on September 3, 2020
Black and white photo of black child with his hands up, with police wielding weapons behind him
partner

The 1968 Kerner Commission Report Still Echoes Across America

Anger over policing and inequality boiled over more than 50 years ago, and a landmark report warned that it could happen again.
by Clyde Haberman via Retro Report on June 23, 2020

The Racist History of Curfews in America

The restrictions imposed during recent racial justice protests have their roots in efforts to “contain” Black Americans. 
by Linda Poon via CityLab on June 18, 2020
Four African-Americans in front of a McDonalds restaurant

The Intertwined History of McDonald’s and Black America

In good ways and bad, the Golden Arches have always loomed large in the African American experience.
by Marcia Chatelain via Gen on January 6, 2020
Ilhan Omar
partner

What Support for Ilhan Omar Tells Us About the Left

The rising tie between black activism and pro-Palestinian advocacy.
by Maha Nassar via Made By History on March 14, 2019
US soldiers use tear gas to “flush” women and children from hiding in Vietnam, 1966.

Tear Gas and the U.S. Border

How did it come to pass that a weapon banned for military use was deployed against asylum-seekers on the U.S. border?
by Stuart Schrader via Process: A Blog for American History on December 6, 2018

A Century of American Protest

A side-by-side look at some of the political protests that have shaped American politics over the past hundred years.
by Eric Maierson via The New Yorker on November 5, 2018

The End of Civil Rights

The attorney general is pushing an agenda that could erase many of the legal gains of modern America's defining movement.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on June 18, 2018

Martin Luther King, Jr. was More Radical Than You Think

On the 50th anniversary of his death, it’s time to remember who he really was.
by Ben Passmore via The Nib on April 4, 2018
Artist Titus Kaphar says that his 2014 Columbus Day Painting—which greets "Unseen" visitors in the first gallery—was inspired by his young son’s conflicted and confusing study of the putative discoverer of America.

Two Artists in Search of Missing History

A new exhibition makes a powerful statement about the oversights of American history and America’s art history.
by Alicia Ault via Smithsonian on April 4, 2018
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