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Abortion rights advocates protest near the Supreme Court building in Washington on June 24.
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The 1960s Provide a Path For Securing Legal Abortion in 2022

How activists can secure legal abortion with a diverse all-of-the-above movement.
by Felicia Kornbluh via Made By History on June 25, 2022
Monuments to the victims of traffic deaths

When Cities Made Monuments to Traffic Deaths

A century ago, cars killed pedestrians and cyclists in record numbers. As traffic deaths rise again, it’s time to remember how US cities once responded to this safety crisis.
by Peter Norton via CityLab on June 10, 2022
A red circle with a slash through it over a pair of puckered lips, superimposed on anti-kissing newspaper articles. Screenshots via Newspapers.com, lips vector by Vecteezy.

The Woman Who Fought to End the 'Pernicious' Scourge of Kissing

New understandings of how disease spread informed Imogene Rechtin's ill-fated 1910 campaign to ban a universal human practice.
by John Last via Smithsonian on May 31, 2022
President William Howard Taft signs New Mexico into statehood at the White House. The signing was witnessed by dignitaries on Jan. 6, 1912

Building Uncle Sam, Inc.

These Progressive Era Republicans wanted to run the Federal government like a business.
by Paul Moreno via Law & Liberty on May 25, 2022
Elderly woman holding a Gray Panthers sign. (from Wikimedia Commons)

Gray Panthers: Bending Bureaucracy and Building Power

The Gray Panthers empowered elderly people to see themselves as experts capable of disentangling convoluted bureaucracies.
by Maya Sandler via LPE Project on May 10, 2022
Students paddling rafts on Milwaukee River

Remember When Earth Day Used to Be Cool?

Today, the holiday is just a chance for ExxonMobil to release nonsensical ad campaigns. But once upon a time, it was a radical success story.
by Liza Featherstone via The New Republic on April 21, 2022
Collage of four images related to urban development. Clockwise from left: photo of Ralph Nader, 1975. [Library of Congress] Aerial view of the Appalachia Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority [Tennessee Valley Authority, public domain] Edward Logue, at a hearing of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1965. [Digital Commonwealth, License CC 4.0] Hunters Point, San Francisco, ca. 1969. [San Francisco Public Library, public domain]

Public Interests

Three books offer views of the shift from public planning to neoliberal privatization, and emphasize the need to reclaim planning in the public interest.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on April 19, 2022
Book cover featuring abstract watercolor splotches behind the title "American Exceptionalism."

"A New History of an Old Idea"

Richard Cándida Smith on Ian Tyrrell’s "American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea."
by Richard Cándida Smith via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on April 17, 2022
Elle Hardy and the cover of her book, Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World.

The Rise of Pentecostal Christianity

While the world’s fastest-growing religious faith offers material benefits and psychological uplift to many, it also pushes a reactionary political agenda.
by Nathan J. Robinson, Elle Hardy via Current Affairs on April 8, 2022
Protesters holding anti-War on Drugs signs with a red target printed over them

How the Drug War Dies

A few decades ago, the left and the right, politicians and the public, universally embraced the criminalization of drug use. But a new consensus has emerged.
by Maia Szalavitz via The Nation on March 21, 2022
A stand from 1925, selling William Jennings Bryan's books, featuring a sign reading "Anti-Evolution League: The Conflict, Hell and The High School"

Why the School Wars Still Rage

From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 10, 2022
Photograph of Marian Brook, a fictional character in HBO's The Gilded Age

Philanthropy and the Gilded Age

As the HBO series The Gilded Age suggests, charity allowed wealthy women to play a visible role in public life. It was also a site of inter-class animosity.
by Annie Bares via JSTOR Daily on March 9, 2022
Group of child laborers

The Age of the Birth Certificate

When states began restricting labor by children, verifying a person's age became an important means of enforcement.
by Matthew Wills, Susan J. Pearson via JSTOR Daily on January 12, 2022
Black and white photograph of four men standing amongst barrels of alcohol.

The Truth About Prohibition

The temperance movement wasn’t an example of American exceptionalism; it was a globe-spanning network of activists and politicians against economic exploitation.
by Mark Lawrence Schrad via The Atlantic on January 1, 2022

We Can’t Blame the South Alone for Anti-Tax Austerity Politics

The strongest resistance to taxation and redistribution came from the Northern ruling class.
by Noam Maggor via Jacobin on November 15, 2021
A colorful bird and landscape sketched within the shape of a man's head.

Emerson Didn’t Practice the Self-Reliance He Preached

How Transcendentalism, the American philosophy that championed the individual, caught on in tight-knit Concord, Massachusetts.
by Mark Greif via The Atlantic on November 9, 2021
A locked public bathroom

Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go?

For decades, U.S. cities have been closing or neglecting public restrooms, leaving millions with no place to go.
by Elizabeth Yuko via CityLab on November 5, 2021
A male janitor is bent over and looking at a urinal in a public bathroom.

A Short History of the Public Restroom

How come it's so hard to go in sweet privacy when you're out and about?
by Peter C. Baldwin, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on November 5, 2021
Black and white photo of children eating a meal together

Have Crisis, Feed Kids

How a series of emergencies resulted in the school lunch programs we have today.
by A. R. Ruis via Nursing Clio on November 4, 2021
A woman in a horse-drawn wagon in the American west.

For Me, but Not for Thee

How white feminism failed Native Americans in the late-19th century.
by Kyla Schuller via Slate on October 25, 2021
Illustration of Achsa Sprague by Fan Pu

She Spoke to the Dead. They Told Her to Free the Slaves.

In 1850s Vermont, Achsa Sprague swore that the spirits who helped her walk again also possessed her with a crucial mission: freeing every soul in America.
by Madeline Bodin via Narratively on October 21, 2021
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West Virginia's Founding Politicians Understood Democracy Better than Today's

They believed that wealth should have no bearing on a citizen’s voting power.
by Daniel W. Sunshine via HNN on October 17, 2021
A 1920s undergarment shop, in black and white.

Bringing Down the Bra

Since the 19th century, women have abandoned restrictive undergarments while pursuing social and political freedom.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via Zócalo Public Square on October 14, 2021
Students in classroom

Which is Better: School Integration or Separate, Black-Controlled Schools?

Historical perspective on school integration.
by Zoë Burkholder via OUPblog on August 11, 2021

Ralph Waldo Emerson Would Really Hate Your Twitter Feed

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.
by Peter Wirzbicki via Psyche on August 9, 2021
Anti-vaccination pamphlets from the early 1900s

Vaccine Hesitancy in the 1920s

As Progressive Era reforms increased the power of government, organized opposition to vaccination campaigns took on a new life.
by James Colgrove, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on July 28, 2021

The US Tax Code Should Not Allow Billionaires to Exist

The recent ProPublica exposé shows we need to attack the wealth and power of the rich — and that means massively increasing taxes on them.
by Josh Mound via Jacobin on July 20, 2021
Man is being carried by a lot of people while sitting on a chair

What Made Gilded Age Politics So Acrimonious?

Fearful of increasing participation, elites of the era attempted to rein in democracy.
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on June 21, 2021
Book cover of "When Good Government Meant Big Government," with text and red and blue stripes in the style of campaign signs.

When Good Government Meant Big Government

An interview with Jesse Tarbert about the history of the American state, “big government,” and the legacy of government reform efforts.
by Jesse Tarbert via Law & History Review on June 16, 2021
Newsies smoking at Skeeter's Branch.

Lewis Hine, Photographer of the American Working Class

Lewis Hine captured the misery, dignity, and occasional bursts of solidarity within US working-class life in the early twentieth century.
by Billy Anania via Jacobin on June 8, 2021
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