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Kent State and the War That Never Ended

The deadly episode stood for a bitterly divided era. Did we ever leave it?

Street Privilege: New Histories of Parking and Urban Mobility

How the history of parking in America highlights its societal inequalities.

A Brief Criminal History of the Mask

How a New York law on “masquerading” passed in the early nineteenth century has been used—and abused—in the decades since.

Power and Policing in New York City

How the NYPD and its conservative allies have used fear and race baiting to curtail attempts to limit policing power in the city.

Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong

The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created, and how we can dismantle it.
Illustration of slavecatchers surrounding a fugitive.

‘A World Turned Upside Down’: How Slavery Morphed into Today’s Carceral State

A new book uses the story of a former slave trader who profited after the Civil War by trafficking in convict labor to trace the historical roots of mass incarceration and racial profiling.
A man shovels out the parking lot of an old factory buildingcovered in graffiti.
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How a 50-Year-Old Study Was Misconstrued to Create Destructive Broken-Windows Policing

The harmful policy was built on a shaky foundation.

“The Police Know Guerrilla Warfare”

During the Cold War, cops at home and military personnel abroad exchanged techniques and tactics to mete out repression and thwart leftist insurgencies.

RIP Fred Hampton: a Black Visionary Assassinated by the FBI

Fifty years ago this week, a squad of Chicago police officers killed Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Enough Toxic Militarism

Decades of militarization in U.S. foreign policy have fueled violence at every level of American society.
Police body cam

The American Tradition of Anti-Black Vigilantism

The history of patrols, body cams, and more.

Why Do Police Drive Cars?

Since the invention of the automobile, police have used the dangers of America's roads to justify their growing oversight of motorists.
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What the LAPD Recruitment Ad on Breitbart Says About the Department’s History

Becoming an agency that wouldn't dream of advertising on Breitbart will require deep changes.
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.

On Eric Garner, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Police Brutality as American Tradition

“¿DEFACEMENT?,” Inspired by the 1983 Police Murder of Michael Stewart.

The Bad-Apple Myth of Policing

Violence perpetrated by cops doesn’t simply boil down to individual bad actors—it’s also a systemic, judicial failing.

Before the Central Park Five, There Was the Trenton Six

In both cases, false confessions were used against a group of black men with only precarious links to one another.
Pride flags outside the Stonewall Inn.

The Forgotten History of Gay Entrapment

Routine arrests were the linchpin of a social system intended to humiliate LGBTQ people.

“Swinging While I’m Singing”: Spike Lee, Public Enemy, and the Message in the Music

Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," featured in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," embodied many sentiments of a black generation.
Protesters overturning a car.

Before Stonewall

It was an important turning point, but by no means were the riots the first act of Queer resistance.
Marchers holding banner at Pride parade

The Stonewall Riots Didn’t Start the Gay Rights Movement

Giving Stonewall too much credit misses the movement’s growing strength in the 1960s, sociologists note.

The Civilian Solution to Bank Robberies

The surprising story of the vigilantes who took it upon themselves to catch bank robbers in the 1920s and 30s.

This, Too, Was History

The battle over police-torture and reparations in Chicago’s schools.
Newspaper profile of the policeman who arrested President Grant.

The Police Officer Who Arrested a President

It was 1872 and the commander-in-chief kept riding his horse too fast through the streets of Washington.
Two men doing a "perp walk"
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Perp Walks: When Police Roll Out the Blue Carpet

Unfair maneuver or a strong warning to would-be criminals?

Payback

For years, Chicago cops tortured false confessions out of hundreds of black men. Years later, the survivors fought for reparations.
Chicago police in a carriage.

A History of Police Violence in Chicago

At the turn of the century, Chicago police killed 307 people, one in eighteen homicides in the city—three times the body count of local gangsters.
Two inmates survey the aftermath of a prison uprising.

Prisons and Class Warfare

A look at the evolution of the prison system in California.

Stop Calling it ‘The Great Migration’

For people of color watching over their shoulder, the fear of police interference harkens back to a historical moment with a much-too-benign label.

Before Parkland, Santa Fe and Columbine…There Was Concord High

In 1985, a 16-year-old dropout showed up to school with a shotgun. Everyone said it was just a fluke.

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