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US National Security council meets in 1967

How LBJ Forged the US-Israel Alliance

The special relationship between the United States and Israel was cemented by the support offered by Lyndon B. Johnson throughout the sixties.
by Ronan Mainprize via Engelsberg Ideas on January 22, 2024
Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara in a Cabinet meeting.

Juxtaposing Liberal Nationalism and International Politics: Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam War

How and why did Johnson consider American military involvement in Vietnam a worthwhile cause that would benefit American interests and American lives?
by Zachary Clary via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on April 4, 2022
Lyndon Johnson with advisors including Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk.

How the Tet Offensive Undermined American Faith in Government

Fifty years ago, the January 1968 battle laid bare the way U.S. leaders had misled the public about the war in Vietnam.
by Julian E. Zelizer via The Atlantic on January 15, 2018
Advocates of student loan forgiveness protest outside the Supreme Court.

Reflections on the Geopolitical Roots of U.S. Student Loan Debt

The emergence of student loan debt in the late 1960s can be situated within a broader shift towards neoliberal governance.
by Britain Hopkins via Process: A Blog for American History on October 29, 2024
A photograph of Joe Biden next to a photograph of Lyndon Baines Johnson imposed on a red background.

Lyndon Johnson Knew That Part of Wielding Power Is Knowing When to Let It Go

As Democrats debate whether Joe Biden should stay in the race against Trump, LBJ’s often misunderstood example looms.
by Christopher Hooks via Texas Monthly on July 2, 2024
US Marines marching in Da Nang, Vietnam, 1965.

How Israel Is Borrowing From the US Playbook in Vietnam

Justifying civilian casualties has a long history.
by Branko Marcetic via The Nation on November 14, 2023
Children in a Head Start classroom look out a window at others in the playground.
partner

America Already Knows How to Address Child Poverty

The history of Head Start shows that child poverty is a choice.
by Michelle Bezark via Made By History on October 5, 2023
A collage shows a white hand segregating Black Americans.

No Breakthrough in Sight

More than fifty years after the Fair Housing Act, inequality and segregation persists. What went wrong?
by Kaila Philo via The Baffler on May 9, 2023
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson at his desk in November 1957.

When Lyndon B. Johnson Chose the Middle Ground on Civil Rights—and Disappointed Everyone

Always a dealmaker, then-senator LBJ negotiated with segregationists to pass a bill that cautiously advanced racial equality.
by Zachary Clary via Smithsonian on January 23, 2023
DDT being sprayed at Jones Beach in New York in 1945.

The Problem With Silent Spring Environmentalism

A new history of the environmental movement places too much emphasis on famous figures like Rachel Carson and shies away from confronting failures.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on January 10, 2023
Black and white photo of J. Edgar Hoover sitting at his desk.

J. Edgar Hoover, Public Enemy No. 1

The F.B.I. director promised to save American democracy from those who would subvert it—while his secret programs subverted it from within.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on November 14, 2022
Pile of US paper currency.

Austerity Policies In The United States Caused ‘Stagflation’ In The 1970s

U.S. government policies must continue to support physical and social infrastructure spending amid the continuing pandemic to avoid ‘stagflation’.
by Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Washington Center For Equitable Growth on January 11, 2022
Photo collage of Republican men, with Donald Trump at the center.

A Short History of Conservative Trolling

On the laughing emptiness at the center of the Republican Party.
by Rick Perlstein via Intelligencer on October 26, 2021
Graduation cap on pile of money
partner

Policymakers Created the Student Loan Industry — and The Debt Crisis

While they never intended for more than 45 million Americans to have this much debt, policymakers in the 1960s made fateful choices.
by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer via Made By History on August 5, 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
Black and white photo of Barbara Bush, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Nancy Reagan, in 1994.

What Do We Want in a First Lady?

Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan grappled with the contradictions of a role that is at once public and private, superficial and serious.
by Amy Davidson Sorkin via The New Yorker on April 19, 2021
photo of Otto Kerner with quote: "freedom for every citizen to live and work according to his capacities and not his color"

We Were Warned About a Divided America 50 Years Ago. We Ignored the Signs

As in the 1960s, the nation today stands at a turning point.
by Elizabeth Hinton via Washington Post on March 16, 2021
Lady Bird Johnson looking through stack of papers at a desk

The Lost Story of Lady Bird

Why do most chroniclers of LBJ’s presidency miss the centrality and influence of the first lady?
by Julia E. Sweig via The Atlantic on March 15, 2021
Black and White photo of demonstrators

When Medicare Helped Kill Jim Crow

By making health care broadly available, the government helps ensure our freedom.
by Mike Konczal via The Nation on January 19, 2021
Prison cells

The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration

Everything you knew about mass incarceration is wrong.
by John Clegg, Adaner Usmani via Catalyst on September 1, 2019
Cover of the U.S. Physical Fitness Program book, featuring silhouettes of people doing calisthenics.
partner

Run DNC, Run RNC

When the federal government began to claim a stake in the public’s physical fitness, and the origins of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.
via BackStory on July 10, 2015
Lyndon Johnson campaigning in Illinois in 1964, the year he declared ‘war on poverty;’ Johnson signing an autograph for an elderly woman.

The War on Poverty: Was It Lost?

Four changes are especially important when we try to measure changes in the poverty rate since 1964.
by Christopher Jencks via New York Review of Books on March 18, 2015

Pox on Your Narrative: Writing Disease Control into Cold War History

How does the global effort to eradicate smallpox fit into the history of U.S.-Soviet relations?
by Erez Manela via Diplomatic History on March 5, 2010
George Kennan; American soldiers and helicopters in Vietnam.

Conservative Realism and Vietnam

We were warned.
by Francis P. Sempa via Modern Age on May 12, 2025
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
by Peter Kornbluh via National Security Archive on February 3, 2025
Lyndon B. Johnson speaking with a U.S. soldier in Vietnam in 1966.

The Cost of Overcorrecting on Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam

For years, LBJ was reviled for Vietnam. Then the historical tables turned in his direction. But they turned a little too far.
by Fredrik Logevall, Julian E. Zelizer via The New Republic on December 2, 2023
Pastoral scene of a family in their yard.

The Strange Death of Private Life

In the early 1970s, the idea that private life meant a right to be left alone – an idea forged over centuries – began to disappear. We should mourn its absence.
by Tiffany Jenkins via Engelsberg Ideas on November 21, 2023
Crowd of Black and White workers walking.

Affirmative Action Never Had a Chance

The conservative backlash to the civil-rights era began immediately — and now it’s nearly complete.
by Zak Cheney-Rice via Intelligencer on June 12, 2023
Bars labeled First through Fourth depicting risk levels for housing loans.

The Shame of the Suburbs

How America gave up on housing equality.
by David Denison via The Baffler on May 9, 2023
The Police Beat Algorithm, along with its computational key. Illustrated by Kelly Chudler.

The 1960s Experiment That Created Today’s Biased Police Surveillance

The Police Beat Algorithm’s outputs were not so much predictive of future crime as they were self-fulfilling prophesies.
by Charlton D. McIlwain via Slate on November 11, 2022
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