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When People Flee to America’s Shores

We are a nation of immigrants and refugees. Yet we always fear who is coming next.
Political cartoon depicting children recoiling from Catholic bishops crawling onto the beach with their robes and hats making them look like crocodiles.

When America Hated Catholics

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

Donald Trump Meet Wong Kim Ark

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

'I Want My Country Back' and Exclusionary Visions of America

"You're taking over our country" echoes long-held narratives and has renewed prominence in conservative discourse.
Know-Nothing flag
Exhibit

The Many Faces of Nativism

As this exhibit shows, anti-immigrant sentiment has been a throughline of American history.

37 Maps That Explain How America Is a Nation of Immigrants

It's impossible to understand the country without knowing who's been kept out, who's been let in, and how they've been treated once they arrive.
Woman holding a turkey on a platter.

The Modern Invention of Thanksgiving

The holiday emerged not from the 17th century, but rather from concerns over immigration and urbanization in the 19th century.

The U.S. Confiscated Half a Billion Dollars in Private Property During WWI

America's home front was the site of internment, deportation, and vast property seizure.

How Columbus Day Fell Victim to Its Own Success

It's worth remembering that the now-controversial holiday started as a way to empower immigrants and celebrate American diversity.

The Hispanic Challenge

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the US into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages.

Political Construction of a Natural Disaster: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853

The conversation around race after Hurricane Katrina echoed discourse from another New Orleans disaster 150 years before.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy speaking

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it.

Trans-National America

In 1916, Randolph Bourne challenged widespread nativism by calling for a reconsideration of the “melting-pot” theory.
Migrant walking down a road.

Los Angeles’ 1936 ‘Bum Blockade’ Targeted American Migrants Fleeing Hardship During the Depression

The two-month patrol stopped “suspicious” individuals from crossing into California. But its execution was uneven, and the initiative proved controversial.
African American workers march past a line of National Guards troops with bayonets fixed.

The National Guard’s History of Violent Labor Repression

Donald Trump recently deployed California’s National Guard to repress protests in LA. The National Guard has a long history of breaking up protests and strikes.
Martin Luther King Jr stands behind a podium.

5 Lessons From the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This Juneteenth we need to discard the caricatures of King that we so often see and learn from what he actually did and believed.

Eco-Terrorists Aren't What They Used to Be

Fifty years on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" remains a problematic text for environmental activists, who are inclined to endorse its violent tendencies.
A newspaper drawing of St. Louis from above.
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German Radicals vs. the Slave Power

In "Memoirs of a Nobody," Henry Boernstein chronicles the militant immigrant organizing that helped keep St. Louis out of the hands of the Confederacy.
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.
A drawing of John Adams.

John Adams Is Bald and Toothless

A brief history of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
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.
Alleged enemy aliens on way to detention camp, Gloucester, New Jersey, 1918.

The Alien Enemies Act: Annotated

Confused about the oft-mentioned Alien Enemies Act? This explainer, with links to free peer-reviewed scholarship, may help clear things up.
A group of Mexican nationals boarding a bus for repatriation to Mexico from the United States.
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Scared Out of the Community

In the 1930s, approximately half a million Mexicans left the United States. Many families had American-born children to whom Mexico was a foreign land.
A hand made into a fist is camouflaged against the American flag.

The Dark Parallels Between 1920s America and Today’s Political Climate

The early 1920s in the US offers historical lessons on how current pessimism about the state of the country can manifest in dangerous, discriminatory ways.
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.
Cover of the book "Immigration and Apocalypse"

How End Times Theology Shaped U.S. Immigration Policy

Much of the rhetoric surrounding immigration debates is steeped in the language of Revelation, argues New Testament professor Yii-Jan Lin.
ICE officers knock on the door of a residence.

Trump Is Drawing on Cold War–Era Repressive Tactics

A previous, dark period of American history paired ethnic exclusion through mass deportations and ideological exclusion through political repression.

The Historical Roots of Donald Trump’s Aggressive Nationalism

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.
A National Guard stands near a burning building during the Los Angeles uprising of 1992.
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How Disaster Provides Cover for Targeting Immigrants

Efforts to target immigrants amid the 1992 L.A. Uprising point to what deportations might look like under Trump 2.0.
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?
Peeling paint.

On “White Slavery” and the Roots of the Contemporary Sex Trafficking Panic

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.

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