Filter by:

Filter by published date

Sections of the US Constitution torn to be used as pennants.

Is the United States Too Devoted to the Constitution?

A new book argues that worship of the Constitution has distorted our politics.
Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Border Presidents and Civil Rights

Three US presidents from the South’s borders—Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson—worked against Southern politicians to support civil and voting rights.
Black men and women in Hilton Head, South Carolina, after the Civil War.

The United States' First Civil Rights Movement

A new history charts the radical agitation around Black rights and freedom back to the early nineteenth century. 
Engraving of freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867

Forging an Early Black Politics

The pre-Civil War North was a landscape not of unremitting white supremacy but of persistent struggles over racial justice by both Blacks and whites.
Illustration of a gavel by Vahram Muradyan

Why Do Americans Have So Few Rights?

How we came to rely on the courts, instead of the democratic process, for justice.

The End of Civil Rights

The attorney general is pushing an agenda that could erase many of the legal gains of modern America's defining movement.

80 Days That Changed America

Fifty years later, Bobby Kennedy’s passionate, inspiring, and tragic presidential campaign still fascinates.

The Fight for Health Care Has Always Been About Civil Rights

In dismantling Obamacare and slashing Medicaid, Republicans would strike a blow against signature victories for racial equality in America.
Supreme Court viewed through a window; Supreme Court justices' hands on their laps.

The Archaic Sex-Discrimination Case the Supreme Court Is Reviving

In Skrmetti, the Court turned to a decades-old decision once thought to be consigned to history.
Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.

States’ Rights to Racism

On the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, racism, and federal power.
Broadside about the Fugitive Slave law.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Annotated

The Fugitive Slave Act erased the most basic of constitutional rights for enslaved people and incentivized US Commissioners to support kidnappers.
Japanese internment camp

How Trump’s Anti-Trans Policies Mirror the WWII Persecution of Japanese Americans

A warning for us all about history repeating itself.
Huddie Lesbetter's draft registration card.

Secret Recordings Show President Roosevelt Debating Military Desegregation with Civil Rights Leaders

More than a year before Pearl Harbor, President FDR heard arguments from the civil rights leaders of the era for the desegregation of the military.
Three Black men having a conversation.

Recovering the Forgotten Past of Black Legal Lives

Dylan C. Penningroth challenges nearly every aspect of our traditional understanding of civil rights history.
Erased chalkboard in empty classroom

Cruel to Your School

Public education is meant to be a great equalizer. That’s why Trump wants to do undo it.
ICE officers knock on the door of a residence.

Trump Is Drawing on Cold War–Era Repressive Tactics

A previous, dark period of American history paired ethnic exclusion through mass deportations and ideological exclusion through political repression.
Zora Neale Hurston.

Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?
Jimmy Carter receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1977.

Here’s How Jimmy Carter Changed Higher Education

He tackled segregation in the nation’s public colleges and fraud in student-aid programs, and established the Department of Education.
partner

How Trump’s Red Wave Builds on the Past

Donald’s Trump’s resounding 2024 victory echoes electoral shifts of the past.
A painting of Napoleon Bonaparte standing in the center of the National Assembly.

Liberalism and Equality

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.
Supreme Court building.
partner

Supreme Court Opinions Don't Have to Be the Final Word

The Supreme Court doesn't have the last word; the people do. How attorneys pushed back on the flawed 1987 McCleskey decision.
Percy Sutton, Flo Kennedy, and another Black reproduction activist.

How Black Leaders Formed the Reproductive Justice Movement

Before the end of Black History Month, we should remember some of the leaders who shaped the movement in the years before Roe v. Wade.
Myisha Eatmon.

Break Every Chain

How black plaintiffs in the Jim Crow South sought justice.
Alabama Governor George Wallace standing in front of an American map with the words, "Wallace County," written over it.

The Freedom to Dominate

When viewing federal authority as a bulwark for civil rights against local tyranny, we miss what the U.S. government has done to sustain white freedom.
People outside the Lafayette Theatre in 1936.

Movie Theaters, the Urban North, and Policing the Color Line

Confronting segregation as Black urbanites' fight for access and equality in northern cinemas.
Antisemitism Is a Threat to Us All — And to Democracy

Antisemitism Is a Threat to Us All — And to Democracy

How fascists and authoritarians have used antisemitic conspiracy theories to harm Jewish communities and undermine democracy.
Collage illustration of a civil rights protest, inflated gas prices, and a Richard Nixon campaign poster.

Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

Was the country’s turn toward free-market fundamentalism driven by race, class, or something else? Yes.
Article about the KKK from an old copy of the Atlantic

What The Atlantic Got Wrong About Reconstruction

In 1901, a series of articles took a dim view of the era, and of the idea that all Americans ought to participate in the democratic process.
A drawing of James Longstreet, zoomed in on his eyes.

The Confederate General Whom All the Other Confederates Hated

James Longstreet became a champion of Reconstruction. Why?
Picture of Frederick Douglass overlaid on a poster advertising a speech of his.

The Annotated Frederick Douglass

In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of "The Atlantic."

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person