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Children in a Head Start classroom look out a window at others in the playground.
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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
Illustration of someone walking up stairs made up of the working class.

How the War on Poverty Stalled

The study of poverty has flourished in recent decades. Why haven’t the lives of the poor improved?
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on August 28, 2023
A man and a dog walk among blighted buildings in the Bronx.

The Persistence of American Poverty

“We could afford to end poverty,” Matthew Desmond tells us. That we don’t is a choice.
by Marcia Chatelain via The Nation on August 21, 2023
Picture of a parent holding a child in a run-down room

The US Hasn't Changed How it Measures Who's Poor Since LBJ Began His War

Newer measures of poverty may do a better job of counting America's poor, which is necessary to helping them.
by Mark Robert Rank via The Conversation on July 12, 2021
A woman reads a book to a child
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What We Get Wrong About the Poverty Gap In Education

Poor children don't struggle in school because of their parents. They struggle because of poverty.
by Mical Raz via Made By History on July 2, 2018

How Poverty and Racism Persist in Mississippi

Author Jesmyn Ward on the racism “built into the bones” of the state where she grew up and is choosing to raise her children.
by Jesmyn Ward via The Atlantic on February 1, 2018

States With Large Black Populations Are Stingier With Government Benefits

States with homogenous populations spend more on the safety net than those with higher shares of minorities.
by Alana Semuels via The Atlantic on June 6, 2017

A Dual Emancipation

How black freedom benefited poor whites.
by Keri Leigh Merritt via Black Perspectives on April 15, 2017

How Poverty Was, and Was Not, Pictured Before the Civil War

Images were important in defining the Republic between the Revolution and the Civil War and they distinctively both did and did not show Americans in need.
by Jonathan Prude via Commonplace on April 12, 2010
Photographer Gordon Parks and Norman Fontanelli, whose family is the subject of Parks's photojournalism.
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Gordon Parks' Diary of a Harlem Family

Narrated photo journal of time spent with a family to discuss poverty and race.
by Public Broadcast Laboratory via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on March 3, 1968
Robert Moses sitting in front of a catelog of blueprints.

The Inadequacy of the Abundance Agenda

Three new books propose market solutions to problems that require government intervention. We’ve been here before. It didn’t end well.
by Timothy Noah via The New Republic on March 27, 2025
Working-class Irish family.

What Made the Irish Famine So Deadly

The Great Hunger was a modern event, shaped by the belief that the poor are the authors of their own misery and that the market must be obeyed at all costs.
by Fintan O’Toole via The New Yorker on March 10, 2025
Louis Armstrong performs on the Kraft Music Hall TV show at NBC Studios in Brooklyn in June 1967 in New York.

Louis Armstrong’s Difficult Upbringing Revealed in Family Police Records

A new book reveals the jazz musician’s mother and sister were arrested several times for prostitution in New Orleans.
by Dalya Alberge via The Guardian on February 1, 2025

Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on February 1, 2025
Pedestrians walking in the financial district of New York City, 1949.

Brad DeLong’s Long March Through the 20th Century

A sweeping new history chronicles a century of unprecedented economic progress driven by markets and innovation.
by Thomas Strand via Jacobin on December 15, 2024
Strom Thurmond speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of Ed Carnes' confirmation to the bench.

The Fight for Justice Starts with Blocking Judges Who Are “Tough on Crime”

The story of how Ed Carnes became a judge offers crucial lessons for those who hope to unwind the policies of mass incarceration.
by Robert L. Tsai via Public Books on November 13, 2024
Statue of Jefferson Davis next to other leaders in Statuary Hall in the Capitol.

Many Wealthy Members of Congress are Descendants of Rich Slaveholders

Researchers measured lawmakers’ wealth and found that those whose Southern ancestors owned slaves before abolition have a higher net worth today.
by Neil K. R. Sehgal, Ashwini Sehgal via The Conversation on October 23, 2024
A McDonald's worker handing a bag of food to someone in a drive through.
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What Harris Talking About Her McDonald's Job Reveals

Harris' rhetoric about working at McDonald's shows how Democrats have rethought their 1990s emphasis on fast food jobs.
by Alex Park via Made By History on September 24, 2024
A hallway inside of an old prison with wooden cell doors and brick walls.

The Supreme Court Is Using History to Disenfranchise Unhoused People

The court’s ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson involves highly selective readings of the historiography and a willful misrepresentation of history.
by Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan via The Panorama on September 17, 2024
Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson visit the Fletcher family in Inez, Kentucky, in 1964.

Who’s to Blame for White Poverty?

Dismantling it requires getting the story right.
by Elizabeth Catte via Boston Review on September 5, 2024
Nora Kenworthy's book: "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare".

Crowded Out: The Dark Side Of Crowdfunding Healthcare And Its Historical Precedents

The moral terrain of crowdfunding is fueled by two persistent social ideologies: the dual, and intertwined, myths of meritocracy and the “deserving poor.”
by Nora Kenworthy via HistPhil on July 12, 2024
A black and white image of Black farmers on a road with farming vehicles.

Land Theft: The Alarming Racial Wealth Gap in America Today

Brea Baker on Black land ownership, historical injustice, and the hope for Black Americans to own more than one percent of the land.
by Brea Baker via Literary Hub on June 20, 2024
Longshoremen on their lunch hour at the San Francisco docks.

Jack London, "Martin Eden" and The Liberal Education in US life

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life.
by Nick Romeo via Aeon on May 3, 2024
Deb Haaland.

Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads

As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.
by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on April 29, 2024
An activist holding a placard that says Stop The War On Women during the protest in Los Angeles in 2019.
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History Shows Abortion Bans Are a War on Poor Women

While some liberals decry abortion bans as a war on women, history reveals that this charge distorts the reality of their impact.
by R. E. Fulton via Made By History on April 15, 2024
"Soulsville" mural in Memphis, Tennessee.

Capitalism and (Under)Development in the American South

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy.
by Keri Leigh Merritt via Aeon on April 2, 2024
A protest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray.

The Problem with Baltimore

The impact of the city's history with slavery.
by Anthony Smooth via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2024
Two people hanging poster of a man looking for his family, holding a photo of himself as a child.

Searching for Guatemala’s Stolen Children

Journalist Rachel Nolan investigates tens of thousands of forced adoptions and the U.S. policy that enabled them.
by Cora Currier via The New Republic on January 25, 2024
Files in Guatemala’s Historical Archive of the National Police. Photo by Luis Soto.

Rachel Nolan: In the Best Interest of the Child

A new book gets inside Guatemala’s international adoption industry and the complicated context of deciding a child’s welfare.
by Rachel Nolan, Erin Siegal McIntyre via Guernica on January 16, 2024
Ivory Perry.

Ivory Perry, the Forgotten Civil Rights Hell-Raiser

Activists are often held up as exemplars of personal morality — but in every social struggle, ordinary people with complex lives rise up as leaders.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on January 15, 2024
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