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A drawing of a variety of social movements protesting.

Peaceable Revolutions

Linda Gordon argues that social movements are vital partnerships that, by challenging the status quo, are indispensable to the health of the nation.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on March 20, 2025
The “Little Red Schoolhouse” in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Schoolhouse Crock

In every generation, charlatans come along with a plan to make education better by spending less money on schools.
by Jennifer C. Berkshire via The Baffler on January 2, 2025
Woodrow Wilson working at his desk on May 1, 1917.

Don’t Be So Quick to Laud Woodrow Wilson

An effort is underway to restore President Wilson’s reputation as a great reformer. His best reforms were won by a mass movement, often pushing against Wilson.
by Henry Snow via Jacobin on March 14, 2024
Black man standing beside barbecue stand, Pittsburgh 1933.

Pittsburgh Reformers and the Black Freedom Struggle

Historian Adam Lee Cilli effectively illustrates the centrality of Black Pittsburgh within the larger Black Freedom Struggle.
by Ashley Everson via Black Perspectives on February 9, 2023
Then–Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in Mitchell, S.D.

What Does It Take to Win?

A new history of American politics examines the past and future of political realignments.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on January 24, 2023
Illustration of William and Florence Kelley

The Father-Daughter Team Who Reformed America

Meet the duo who helped achieve the most important labor and civil rights victories of their age.
by Jon Grinspan via Smithsonian on November 3, 2022
Depiction of an agricultural fair with crowds of people gathered around exhibit halls.

Slavery, Technology and the Social Origins of the US Agricultural State

Ariel Ron discusses the rise of the agricultural state in his book, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic.
by Ariel Ron via Broadstreet on September 3, 2021

Police Reform Doesn’t Work

A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis suggests that none of the city’s current proposals will prevent another George Floyd.
by Michael Brenes via Boston Review on April 23, 2021
Illustration of a Lancasterian school building

A History of Technological Hype

When it comes to education technology, school leaders have often leaped before they looked.
by Adam Laats, Victoria E. M. Cain via Phi Delta Kappan on February 22, 2021
Union suit on clothesline

How 19th-Century Activists Ditched Corsets for One-Piece Long Underwear

Before it was embraced by men, the union suit, or 'emancipation suit,' was worn by women pushing for dress reform.
by Marlen Komar via Smithsonian on January 19, 2021

Can Biden Be Pushed Left?

History suggests that what you see on the campaign trail, or even in a candidate’s past record, is not always what you get from a president once in power.
by Bob Master via Dissent on October 14, 2020

From Progress to Poverty: America’s Long Gilded Age

The America that emerged out of the Civil War was meant to be a radically more equal place. What went wrong?
by Steven Hahn via The Nation on April 18, 2018

Jane Addams’s Crusade Against Victorian “Dancing Girls”

Jane Addams, a leading Victorian-era reformer, believed dance halls were “one of the great pitfalls of the city.”
by Erin Blakemore via JSTOR Daily on October 11, 2017

On Health Care, History is Watching. And it’s Watching Four Senators in Particular.

We should not be surprised by the attacks on Obamacare, they are, in fact, the typical response to social reform.
by E. J. Dionne Jr. via Washington Post on July 16, 2017
A Democratic donkey with its head cut off is surrounded by hands pointing at charts and graphs.

How Strategist Brain Took Over the Democratic Party

During the Reagan revolution, Democrats settled on a new way to win—and it’s destroying them now.
by Ben Mathis-Lilley via Slate on July 10, 2025
The word "god" is visible, chiseled into the wall behind a statue of Thomas Jefferson.
partner

Why the Founders Fought for Separation of Church and State

Establishing freedom of religion was a hard-fought success of the American Founding. Today we are still fighting.
by John A. Ragosta via Made By History on July 10, 2025
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: A Vote for Cutting Off Your Nose

To reduce Virginia’s use of the death penalty, Thomas Jefferson proposed using permanent disfigurement as a punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy.
by Matthew Wills, Emily Cock via JSTOR Daily on June 4, 2025
partner

Not Just the Dog-Eared Pages

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
by Anthony Aycock via HNN on June 3, 2025
John Cassidy

John Cassidy on Capitalism and Its Critics

The author on capitalism’s critics, why everyone is so unhappy with the system, and what may come next.
by John Cassidy, James Surowiecki via The Yale Review on May 27, 2025
Attica after state police stormed the prison, 1971.

How Should We Remember Attica?

Orisanmi Burton’s "Tip of the Spear" uncovers the obscured and radical demands of the inmates who staged the 1971 prison uprising—a world without prisons.
by Charlotte Rosen via The Nation on May 26, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
partner

The History of Why Raw Milk Regulation is Necessary

In the 19th century, tens of thousands of babies died every year of gastroenteritis.
by Carla Cevasco via Made By History on April 29, 2025
Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan

American Populists Used to Run Against Tariffs. It Could Happen Again.

William Jennings Bryan stoked a worker revolt against protectionism that led to the first income tax.
by Tony Annett via Washington Post on April 9, 2025
Political cartoon of men chopping down the tree of slavery.

The Root and The Branch: Working-Class Reform and Antislavery, 1790–1860

On the robust influence of labor reform and antislavery ideas and movements on each other from the early National period to the Civil War.
by Rosemary Fuerer, Sean Griffin via LaborOnline on April 9, 2025
Political cartoon of smokers.

Puff, Puff? Pass!: The Anti-Tobacco Writings of Margaret Woods Lawrence

Reformers linked tobacco use to a deterioration of social and familial values, a habit that disrupted the sanctity of the home.
by Brian Fehler via Commonplace on April 8, 2025
A torn border fence is bent into the shape of the Americas.

What America Can Learn From the Americas

Greg Grandin’s sweeping history of the new world shows how immutably intertwined the United States is with Latin America.
by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on April 7, 2025
A hand bound to a gavel.

The Question Progressives Refuse to Answer

As Democrats became the party of proceduralism, they sidestepped a crucial debate.
by Marc J. Dunkelman via The Atlantic on April 2, 2025
Francis Townsend
partner

Creating the “Senior Citizen” Political Identity

On the movement that fought for old-age pensions during the Great Depression.
by Linda Gordon via HNN on March 19, 2025
Eve Ewing, and the cover of her book "Original Sins."

How Do We Combat the Racist History of Public Education?

On the schoolhouse’s role in enforcing racial hierarchy.
by Naomi Elias, Eve L. Ewing via The Nation on March 4, 2025
Charles J. Guiteau.

How Civil Service Protections Emerged After James Garfield’s Assassination

Reformers in the Republican Party had been calling for a professional, merit-based civil service since shortly after the Civil War.
by Scott S. Greenberger via Retropolis on February 13, 2025
Ben Davis Jr. leaving courthouse, surrounded by crowd carrying signs bearing various slogans.

In 1930s NYC, Proportional Representation Boosted the Left

NYC history suggests that the Left might profitably revive proportional representation as a tool to build its electoral strength.
by Trevor Goodwin via Jacobin on January 26, 2025
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