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Portrait of Creek men.
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A Federal Court Has Ruled Blood Cannot Determine Tribal Citizenship. Here’s Why That Matters.

The struggle over blood and belonging in American Indian communities.
by Alaina E. Roberts via Made By History on March 9, 2024
A courtroom or public civic room full of people, with white and black people sitting on opposite sides of a railing.

When Tribal Nations Expel Their Black Members

Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America.
by Philip J. Deloria via The New Yorker on July 14, 2022
Political cartoon of Albert Gallatin attempting to stop a chariot driven by George Washington.

Nativism, Conspiracy Theories, and Mobs in Federalist America

Many people celebrate the U.S. as a nation of immigrants, but nativism has infused its politics from the outset.
by Sean P. Harvey via The Panorama on December 14, 2021
Profile portrait of Zitkala-Sa, a Native American woman, with long hair and beaded necklaces

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša): Advocate for the "Indian Vote"

The story of Indigenous women’s participation in the struggle for women’s suffrage is highly complex, and Zitkala-Ša’s story provides an illuminating example.
by Cathleen D. Cahill via National Park Service on December 14, 2020
Exhibit

“All Persons Born or Naturalized in the United States...”

A collection of resources exploring the evolving meanings of American citizenship and how they have been applied -- or denied -- to different groups of Americans.
The author's great-grandparents, Ida Brown and Nathan “Jack” Dashow, in their 1920 wedding photo.

How My Great-Grandmother Lost Her U.S. Citizenship The Year Women Got The Right to Vote

In 1920, my American-born great-grandmother, Ida Brown, married a Russian immigrant in New York City.
by Jayne Orenstein via Retropolis on August 13, 2020
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It’s Time to Fulfill the Promise of Citizenship

The rights we save may be our own.
by Hidetaka Hiroka, Natalia Molina via Made By History on July 29, 2018

Why We Doubt Capable Children

How we inherited our modern understanding of childhood from the 18th-century revolutionary era.
by Julia M. Gossard via The Junto on April 17, 2018
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Most Countries Have Given up Their Colonies. Why Hasn’t America? 

Because politicians prioritize military might over individual rights.
by David Vine via Made By History on September 28, 2017
Poster for "Independence for Puerto Rico."

Are Puerto Ricans Really American Citizens?

How it came to be that Puerto Rico came to have a separate but unequal status under American law.
by Charles R. Venator-Santiago via The Conversation on March 2, 2017

The Captive Aliens Who Remain Our Shame

On the origins of racial exclusion in the society that would become the United States of America.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via New York Review of Books on January 19, 2017
A racially diverse group of children saying the Pledge of Allegiance while one holds an American flag.

Who Gets to Be an American?

Since the earliest days of the Republic, American citizenship has been contested, subject to the anti-democratic impulses of racism, suspicion, and paranoia.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on May 20, 2025
V. Ramirez's Army Corps badge.

How Real ID Excludes Real Americans

My dad’s birth certificate said Vicente. His passport said Vince. New legislation would have disenfranchised him.
by Catherine S. Ramírez via Zócalo Public Square on May 12, 2025
Drawing of the fight between two congressional representatives titled "Congressional pugilists," 1798.

Alien Enemies, Alien Friends, and the Concept of “Allegiance”

With controversy raging over the Alien Enemies Act, how should we understand the concept it invoked?
by Robert Natelson via Law & Liberty on March 24, 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
Flags of Native American tribes at Omaha Beach memorial.

No, Native American Citizenship Does Not Support Limits on Birthright Citizenship

This defense misconstrues both the Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions relying on it.
by Bethany Berger via Lawfare on March 12, 2025
President Eisenhower; The silhouette of a hand pressing into a fence that is blocking the American flag.

The Shaky History of Mass Deportations

‘Operation Wetback’ and ‘Mexican Repatriation’ worked—until they didn’t.
by Benjamin Montoya via The Dispatch on March 5, 2025
Protestors use the celebrated Hamilton lyric, “Immigrants: We Get the Job Done” to protest the first inauguration of President Donald Trump.

“The Premise of Our Founding”: Immigration and Popular Mythmaking

On the tension between celebratory rhetoric and restrictive policy surrounding immigration.
by Connie Thomas via The Panorama on February 24, 2025
New citizens swearing an oath to the US at a naturalization ceremony.

The Forgotten Meaning of the Citizenship Clause

Universal birthright citizenship was never the original intent.
by Amy Swearer via Law & Liberty on February 13, 2025
A crib drawn with Stars and Stripes symbolism.

Birthright Citizenship Is a Sacred Guarantee

The attack on it is a violation of the nation’s post–Civil War rebirth.
by David W. Blight via The Atlantic on January 27, 2025
Chinese workers standing in the streets.

The Long Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act

The true cost of the immigration policy can be measured in the generations of Chinese Americans who were never born.
by Jane C. Hu via The New Yorker on January 23, 2025
A collage of the United States Constitution, seal, and a hand holding two small American flags.

The Attack on Birthright Citizenship Is a Big Test for the Constitution

Does the text mean what it plainly says?
by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on January 22, 2025
Mountainous Alaska landscape.

Trump’s Push to Control Greenland Echoes US Purchase of Alaska From Russia in 1867

The tale of how and why Russia ceded its control over Alaska to the U.S. 150 years ago is actually two tales and two intertwining histories.
by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley via The Conversation on January 8, 2025
Newborn babies sleeping in a maternity ward.

The Coming Assault on Birthright Citizenship

The Constitution is absolutely clear on this point, but will that matter?
by Amanda Frost via The Atlantic on January 7, 2025
Three Border Patrol agents detaining migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump Wants to Use the Alien Enemies Act to Deport Immigrants – but the Law is Meant for War Time

The Alien Enemies Act, first approved in the late 1700s, was last used during World War II to identify particular foreign nationals living in the US.
by Daniel Tichenor via The Conversation on December 11, 2024
A girl in Native American tribal regalia being crowned as homecoming queen.

The Complex Politics of Tribal Enrollment

How did the U.S. government become involved in “adjudicating Indianness”?
by Rachel Monroe via The New Yorker on November 20, 2024
American Indian woman wearing a shirt that reads "You are on Indian land."
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The Ambivalent History of Indigenous Citizenship

A century ago, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, key questions about Native sovereignty were left unresolved.
by Daniel R. Mandell via Made By History on October 14, 2024
Battleship NEW YORK at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dry dock, Bremerton, Washington, 1914

Postcolonial Pacific: The Story of Philippine Seattle

The growth of Seattle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is inseparable from the arrival of laborers from the US-colonized Philippines.
by H. M. A. Leow, Dorothy Fujita-Rony via JSTOR Daily on September 29, 2024
The American Flag, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and a Jewish Star with Hebrew words.

The Spirit of '76: A Jewish Perspective on the American Revolution

What was “exceptional” about the American Revolution wasn’t so much the creation of a single republic but the immediate opportunity it provided for action.
by Michael Hoberman via Marginalia Review of Books on September 27, 2024
Political cartoon showing Supreme Court Justice Sutherland handing a woman worker a decision on minimum wage.

The Most Conservative Branch

Stephen Breyer criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and argues for a more pragmatic jurisprudence.
by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2024
Children and a teacher at an Indian Boarding School.

US Citizenship Was Forced on Native Americans 100 Years Ago − Its Promise Remains Elusive

Why few Native Americans are celebrating the centennial of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
by Kerri Malloy via The Conversation on July 25, 2024
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