rape accusations — Bunk History

“Raise Up,” a statue by artist Hank Willis Thomas of African Americans with their hands raised above their heads, is featured in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History

A researcher delves into the past to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era South Carolina.

by Deidre H. Crumbley via Sapiens on August 10, 2022

Tupac shirtless in the shower, wearing gold chain and covered in soap suds

Why Tupac Never Died

It’s because the rapper’s life and work were a cascade of contradictions that we’re still trying to figure him out today.

by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on October 23, 2023

Colorful illustration of gladiator-like figure with sword surrounded by various phrases and people, all relating to the Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Deal With the Devil

Fifty years ago, zealots preaching misogyny and homophobia—led by an accused sexual predator—took over America’s largest Protestant denomination.

by Sarah Posner via The Nation on September 12, 2022

Lithograph of Sir Matthew Hale

On Roe, Alito Cites a Judge Who Treated Women as Witches and Property

Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist, has been endlessly quoted by American judges and lawyers, with awful repercussions for women.

by Jill Elaine Hasday via Washington Post on May 9, 2022

The 1906 Atlanta massacre, as depicted on the front page of the newspaper Le Petit Journal in 1906.

The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre: How Fearmongering Led to Violence

As African Americans achieved economic success in Atlanta in the early 1900s, the city simmered with racial strife that was further spread by yellow journalism.

by Nadra Kareem Little via HISTORY on September 14, 2021

Black and white photo featuring eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys with NAACP representatives Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Laura Kellum, and Dr. Ernest W. Taggart—was taken inside the prison where the Scottsboro Boys were being held.

Who Were the Scottsboro Nine?

The young black men served a combined total of 130 years for a crime they never committed.

by Alice George via Smithsonian on March 23, 2021

Amy Cooper calling the police on Christian Cooper, a Black birdwatcher.

Amy Cooper Played the Damsel in Distress. That Trope Has a Troubling History.

Purportedly protecting white women has justified centuries of racist violence — while doing little to actually protect white women.

by Mia Brett via Made By History on March 28, 2020

Before And After

The allegations against Michael Jackson make listening to his songs a struggle, one that resists the comfort those songs once provided.

by Ann Powers via NPR on December 11, 2019

Film still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

The Contested Legacy of Atticus Finch

Lee’s beloved father figure was a talking point during the Kavanaugh hearings and is now coming to Broadway. Is he still a hero?

by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on December 10, 2018

In the Hate of Dixie

Cynthia Tucker returns to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama – also the hometown of Harper Lee, and the site of 17 lynchings.

by Cynthia Tucker via The Bitter Southerner on August 28, 2018

How Cosby's 'Pound Cake' Speech Helped Lead to His Downfall

His moralizing accelerated the cultural backlash against him and provided evidence that would be used against him at trial.

by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on April 26, 2018

What Trump Could Learn from America's Long History of Sex Scandals

Too bad Trump isn't a student of history.

by Mark Hay via Vice on March 26, 2018

Bill Clinton: A Reckoning

Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history.

by Caitlin Flanagan via The Atlantic on November 13, 2017

What Do You Do After Surviving Your Own Lynching?

On August 7, 1930, three black teenagers were lynched in Marion, Indiana. James Cameron was one of them.

by Syreeta McFadden via BuzzFeed News on June 23, 2016

Ships on fire and being evacuated at Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor as Metaphor

At the frontier of American empire.

by John Gregory Dunne via The New Yorker on April 29, 2001

NAACP Legal Defense Fund button against lynching.

“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.

by Ida B. Wells, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on February 21, 2025

Execution Chamber with restraining bed

50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It's Time to Revive it

Fifty years ago in 1972, as spring faded and summer arrived in late June, America (and the world) was a vastly different place.

by Rick Halperin via HNN on June 28, 2022

Richard Wright.

Outcasts and Desperados

Reflections on Richard Wright’s recently published novel, "The Man Who Lived Underground."

by Adam Shatz via London Review of Books on October 4, 2021

Scottsboro Boys standing

Ada Wright, The Scottsboro Defense Campaign, and the Popular Front

The Scottsboro Case quickly became one of the most infamous international spectacles that would eventually define the interwar period.

by Ashley Everson via Black Perspectives on July 13, 2021

A graphic with web browsers open depicting lizard people, hooded satanists, Satan, Donald Trump, the jewish star, a bloody, blood being poured into a goblet, ritualistic candles, and an ominous well.

QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic

How the ancient, antisemitic nocturnal ritual fantasy expresses itself through the ages—and explains the right’s fascination with fringe conspiracy theories.

by Talia Lavin via The New Republic on September 29, 2020

Statues of three men against a city backdrop

One Hundred Years Ago, a Lynch Mob Killed Three Men in Minnesota

The murders in Duluth offered yet another example that the North was no exception when it came to anti-black violence.

by Francine Uenuma via Smithsonian on June 10, 2020

Lynching Preachers: How Black Pastors Resisted Jim Crow and White Pastors Incited Racial Violence

Religion was no barrier for Southern lynch mobs intent on terror.

by Malcolm Brian Foley via The Conversation on February 10, 2020

Escaped Nuns

Why some antebellum reformers thought convents were incompatible with "true womanhood."

by Pete Cajka, Cassandra L. Yacovazzi via Religion in American History on June 17, 2019

Prosecutor Linda Fairstein, left, during a news conference in New York on March 26, 1988. Seated at the table next to her are District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Ellen Levin, mother of Jennifer Levin, who was murdered in 1986. (Charles Wenzelberg/AP)

Linda Fairstein is Under Fire for the Central Park Five. But Another Part of Her Career Deserves Greater Scrutiny

By targeting sex workers, she enacted policies that harmed the most vulnerable women.

by Anne Gray Fischer via Made By History on June 12, 2019

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?

One film fan's struggle to reconcile the things she loves with the things she knows to be true.

by Claire Dederer via The Paris Review on November 20, 2017

The Devastation of Black Wall Street

Racial violence destroyed an affluent African-American community, seen as a threat to white-dominated American capitalism.

by Kimberly Fain via JSTOR Daily on July 5, 2017

Bringing Rapes to Court

How sexual assault victims in colonial America navigated a legal system that was enormously stacked against them.

by Sharon Block via Commonplace on April 1, 2003

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