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The United States Supreme Court building.
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‘Originalism’ Only Gives the Conservative Justices One Option On a Key Gun Case

Regulations limiting armed travel in public, particularly in populous areas, stretch back over seven centuries.
Left: Longfellow in His Study, by Worth Brehm, c. 1912. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Right: Dante Meditating on “The Divine Comedy”, by Jean-Jacques Feuchère, 1843.

As Far From Heaven as Possible

How Henry Wadsworth Longfellow interpreted Reconstruction by translating Dante.
Protestor holds 'Dismantle White Supremacy' sign at Civil War statue
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The Historical Preservation Law That Obscures History

At the South Carolina State House, the history of Reconstruction has been systemically erased from view.
Two hooded KKK members

The Ku Klux Klan Was Also a Bosses’ Association

The KKK violently resisted the revolutionary gains of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and sought to keep the black masses toiling in submission.
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Conservatives Are Once Again Trying to Erase Black History

The battles over Critical Race Theory and Southern heritage are really about a narrow, exclusionary reading of our past.
The Hussman School of Journalism and Media’s Carroll Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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The Irony of Complaints About Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Advocacy Journalism

The White press helped destroy democracy in the South. Black journalists developed an activist tradition because they had to.
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.
A group of formerly enslaved people at a county almshouse, c. 1900.

Juneteenth Is About Freedom

On Juneteenth, we should remember both the struggle against chattel slavery and the struggle for radical freedom during Reconstruction.
The construction of the famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.

The City That Embodies the United States’ Contradictions

In the history of St. Louis, we find both a radical and reactionary past—and a more hopeful future too.
People signing the declaration of independence

Our 250-Year Fight for Multiracial Democracy

We say we’re for it. We’ve never truly had it. These next few years will determine its fate.

The Unreconstructed Radical

Thaddeus Stevens was a fierce opponent of the “odious” compromises in the Constitution, and of the North’s compromises after the Civil War.
Stokely Charmichael with microphone, speaking to crowd. Supporters are standing behind him on stage.

The Birth of Black Power

Stokely Carmichael and the speech that changed the course of the civil rights movement.
A map of the eastern US, with a line from Washington DC to St. Louis.

The Ill-Fated Idea to Move the Nation's Capital to St. Louis

In the years after the Civil War, some wanted a new seat of government that would be closer to the geographic center of a growing nation.
Thaddeus Stevens

The Radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens understood far better than most that fully uprooting slavery meant overthrowing the South’s economic system and challenging property rights.
Illustration of the Reconstruction era, with black men waving flags and listening to a speech in front of a governmet building while a white mob comes to attack them with clubs

America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama

When I think about the 1870 riot, I remember how the country rejected the opportunity it had.
Headshot of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass and the American Project

It would be hard to blame him if he had lost faith in the republic.
Recruiting poster for USCT featuring a lithograph of African American soldiers.

In 1868, Black Suffrage Was on the Ballot

At the height of the Reconstruction, the pressing issue of the election was Black male suffrage.
Deputy sheriff at county fair in Gonzales, Texas.

New Sheriff in Town

Law enforcement and the urban-rural divide.
An illustration of an accordion being played.

The "Good Old Rebel" at the Heart of the Radical Right

How a satirical song mocking uneducated Confederates came to be embraced as an anthem of white Southern pride.
Raphael Warnock
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Warnock’s Win Was 150 Years In the Making — But History Tells Us It Is Fragile

The selection of African American Sen. Hiram Revels in 1870 offered great hope — but it was soon dashed.
Members of the National Guard stand behind a fence outside of the U.S. Capitol building.

Impeachment May Not Work. Here’s the Next Best Way to Dump Trump

The 14th Amendment offers a remedy that is both simpler and likelier to work.
A composite photograph of South Carolina's majority-black legislature created and circulated by opponents of Reconstruction

The Austerity Politics of White Supremacy

Since the end of the Confederacy, the cult of the “taxpayer” has provided a socially acceptable veneer for racist attacks on democracy.
Man with a pistol at his hip carries the retired flag of Mississippi with a confederate battle emblem in it, and a Trump 2020 flag.
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Yes, Wednesday’s Attempted Insurrection Is Who We Are

While Wednesday's images shocked us, they fit into our history.
Man walks through the U.S. Capitol holding a confederate flag on Jan 6, 2021.
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1871 Provides A Road Map for Addressing the Pro-Trump Attempted Insurrection

Commitment to racial justice, not conciliation, is needed to save democracy.

Meet Joseph Rainey, the First Black Congressman

Born enslaved, he was elected to Congress in the wake of the Civil War. But the impact of this momentous step in U.S. race relationships did not last long.
Portrait of Martin Delany in uniform

The Organizer’s Mind of Martin Delany

Delany's insistence on interest-based coalitions, evident in his fiction and political prose, explains his late-Reconstruction defection to the Democrats and his strategies for revolution.
Illustration of a black man laying on the ground while three men step on him, 1868.

Echoes of the Reconstruction Era: The Political Violence of 1868

The 1868 Election was the first one in which hundreds of thousands of African American men voted. It also began an unfortunate history of voter suppression.

An American Pogrom

Uncovering the truth about the 1898 massacre of black voters in Wilmington, North Carolina.
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Contested Elections Can Unleash Violent White Supremacy. We Have Seen It Before.

Why President Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the election results is so dangerous.
Rutherford B. Hayes and Donald Trump.
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The Election From Our Past That Blares a Warning for 2020

A contested presidential election in 1876 produced a devastating compromise.

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