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The Struggle Over the Meaning of the 14th Amendment Continues

The fight over the 150-year old language in the Constitution is a battle for the very heart of the American republic.

Identity Politics Can Make or Break the Democratic Party

Racial justice energized the party in the past. It can today too.

The Party of Hubert Humphrey

The Democratic leader believed that the ordinary American was open to a message of collective responsibility and common purpose.

This, Our Second Nadir

Why the Trump Era demands a better understanding of how racism got us into this mess.

How Country Music Went Conservative

Country music is assumed to be the soundtrack of the Republican Party. But it wasn't always that way.

Charlottesville and the Trouble with Civil War Hypotheticals

Only by the most specific, immediate definition can we consider the Confederacy to have lost the Civil War.
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A Party in Secret Passes an Overwhelmingly Unpopular Law. We’ve Been Here Before.

It ended in disaster.

The Price of Union

The undefeatable South.

Killing Reconstruction

During Reconstruction, elites used racist appeals to silence calls for redistribution and worker empowerment.

Remembering President Wilson's Purge of Black Federal Workers

Woodrow Wilson arrived at the White House determined to eliminate the gains African-Americans made during Reconstruction.
Henry McNeal Turner.

Am I a Man?: The Fiery 1868 Speech By An Expelled Black Legislator In Georgia

The expulsion of two Black lawmakers from the Tennessee House recalls an earlier expulsion of dozens of Black lawmakers from Georgia's General Assembly.
Wilmington after the massacre.
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The Troubling Consequence of State Takeovers of Local Government

State efforts to usurp local government power over schools, elections, and police tend to diminish Black political power.
People holding antiwar signs at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

A Brief History of the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party, and the US political system as a whole, is a very strange beast.
Starbucks workers on strike.

The Paradox of the American Labor Movement

It’s a great time to be in a union—but a terrible time to try to start a new one.
Ronald Reagan campaigns in Houston ahead of the Republican Convention in 1976.
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How Abortion Took Over the Republican Party

Ronald Reagan proved instrumental to Southerners bringing their cultural conservatism to center stage for the Republican Party.
Senators Cory Booker and Chuck Grassley conversing.

How Washington Bargained Away Rural America

Every five years, the farm bill brings together Democrats and Republicans. The result is the continued corporatization of agriculture.
Howard University students protesting outside the Attorney General’s Conference on Crime held at Memorial Continental Hall, Washington, D.C., December 13, 1934. The four-day conference failed to include lynching in its program.

A Regional Reign of Terror

Most Americans now grasp that violence was essential to the functioning of slavery, but a new book excavates the brutality of everyday Black life in the Jim Crow South.
George Wallace pointing to map of United States with "Wallace Country" written on it.

How the Right Turned “Freedom” Into a Dog Whistle

A new book traces the long history of cloaking racism in the language of resistance to an overbearing federal government.
James K. Polk.

The President Who Did It All in One Term — and What Biden Could Learn From Him

James K. Polk is considered one of the most successful presidents, even though he did not seek reelection.
Group of seated Black soldiers listening to staff sergeant explain G.I. Bill of Rights

How a Hostile America Undermined Its Black World War II Veterans

Service members were attacked, discredited, and shortchanged on GI benefits—with lasting implications.
Timeline of the history of American political parties to 1880, depicting intertwined streams of Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans.
original

What is Political Realignment?

An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the shifting sands of American politics.
Rally honoring Martin Luther King Jr., Central Park, New York City, 1968

A Case of the Mondays

The beginning of the fight for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
People holding union and BLM signs out of their car windows, taking part in the Workers First Caravan for Racial and Economic Justice, June 17, 2020, with the US capitol in the background.
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How Conservatives Drove a Wedge Between Economic and Cultural Liberals

Elites understood that a unified left spelled doom for their economic advantages.
Cleveland-Stevenson Tariff Reform Portrait Handkerchief

Tax Regimes

Historian Robin Einhorn reflects on Americans’ complicated relationship to taxes, from the colonial period through the Civil War to the tax revolts of the 1980s.
"Impeach Earl Warren" billboard by the John Birch Society.

Rise of the Far-Right Ultras

A new book shows just how porous the dividing line has been between the far right and mainstream conservatism.
Political cartoon calling the caning of Sumner "Southern chivalry."
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History’s Lessons for the Jan. 6 Committee

This isn’t the first time a House committee has investigated political violence in the Capitol.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs state legislation on voting rights.

The Strange Career of Voting Rights in Texas

Republicans in Texas, and indeed around the country, remain hell-bent on going back to the future.
The Electoral Commission of 1877 holding a secret session by candle-light.
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The Electoral Count Act Is Broken. Fixing It Requires Knowing How It Became Law.

Trump tried to exploit flaws that were embedded in the law from the start.
Newark protesters and National Guard

A Warning Ignored

America did exactly what the Kerner Commission on the urban riots of the mid-1960s advised against, and fifty years later reaped the consequences it predicted.
The plough, the loom and the anvil book drawing

In the Common Interest

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South.

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