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A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.
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The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.
A group of three abolitonists standing in front of a man holding a bag of money and brandishing a chair as a weapon, with the caption "The Disappointed Abolitionists."

The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles

History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.
Peeling paint.

On “White Slavery” and the Roots of the Contemporary Sex Trafficking Panic

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.
An older man standing outside a restaurant.

Aging Out

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.
An artistic collage juxtiposing a transatlantic slave ship with a tenement in Harlem.

How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Continues to Impact Modern Life

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.
A drawing of two parents and a child running at a border, their silhouettes being sliced by a chainlink fence.

The Crime of Human Movement

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.
George Floyd protest

Reflections of the 60th Anniversary of Urban Uprisings in America

The media narrative used to discredit urban rebellions as violent betrayals of the civil rights movement has been attached to protests ever since.
Aerial view of big buildings, wide roads, open parking lots, and affordable housing from "Project One" in Newport, Virginia.

Urban Renewal in Virginia

Urban landscapes and communities all across the state of Virginia still bear the scars of urban renewal.
Carver Junior High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

How to Keep a School Open

Two Carvers and the fight for fair desegregation.
Painting of enslaved people waiting to be sold.

Enslaved Women’s Resistance to Slavery and Gendered Violence

A new book offers a fresh perspective on the resistance of enslaved women and their interactions with the law.

They Settled in Houston After Katrina — and Then Faced a Political Storm

The backlash against an effort to resettle 200,000 evacuees holds lessons for future disasters.
Fannie Lou Hamer speaks at the Democratic National Convention in 1964.

The Civil-Rights Era’s Great Unanswered Question

Is this America?
John Roberts, Lewis F. Powell Jr., and a statue of Lady Justice between them.

There’s a New Lewis Powell Memo, and It’s Wildly Racist

One young conservative lawyer would lead a determined fight to maintain Lewis Powell’s blindfolded race neutrality.
Sheet music depicting a fugitive slave.

Against the Slave Power: the Fugitive Liberalism of Frederick Douglass

Douglass elaborated a political theory attuned to the differential character of law as it applied to slaves and other outlaws.
James Baldwin

The Brilliance in James Baldwin’s Letters

The famous author, who would have been 100 years old today, was best known for his novels and essays. But correspondence was where his light shone brightest.
Nora Kenworthy's book: "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare".

Crowded Out: The Dark Side Of Crowdfunding Healthcare And Its Historical Precedents

The moral terrain of crowdfunding is fueled by two persistent social ideologies: the dual, and intertwined, myths of meritocracy and the “deserving poor.”
President Calvin Coolidge raising his hand behind a podium to be sworn into office.
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Behind America’s First Comprehensive Federal Immigration Law

Even as the primary targets of immigration restrictionism have shifted, the consequences for immigrants remain profoundly shaped by the system created in 1924.
Lithograph of George Washington on his land with people he enslaved.

What, to the American, Is Revolutionary?

The colonial rebellion we celebrate every July 4th doesn’t fit the definition.
Scale with hundred-dollar bills weighing down one side.

Markets and the Law

Neoliberalism isn’t just a set of economic precepts—it’s also an architecture of laws passed to reinforce those precepts. Those laws must be changed.
A black and white image of Black farmers on a road with farming vehicles.

Land Theft: The Alarming Racial Wealth Gap in America Today

Brea Baker on Black land ownership, historical injustice, and the hope for Black Americans to own more than one percent of the land.
Black student looking up at a school bus full of white children.

The Boston ‘Busing Crisis’ Was Never About Busing

Five decades after the desegregation effort, a civil-rights scholar questions its framing.
Rickwood Field is the oldest ballpark in the United States.

Everyone Should Know About Rickwood Field, the Alabama Park Where Baseball Legends Made History

The sport's greatest figures played ball in the Deep South amid the racism and bigotry that would later make Birmingham the center of the civil rights movement.
A gavel smashing a wooden house.

The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning

America is suffering from a severe housing shortage. A crucial tool may lie in the Constitution.
Map depicting existing and proposed structures and modifications to the Hayti neighborhood in Durham, NC, 1960.
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The Uneven Costs of Cross-Country Connectivity

Promoted as a social and economic savior, the US federal interstate highway system acted as a tool to promote racial injustices.
Cover of "The Black Tax"

Tax History Matters: A Q&A with the Author of ‘The Black Tax’

The history of the property tax system and its structural defects that have led to widespread discrimination against Black Americans.
Cover of "James" by Percival Everett

Gulp Fiction, or Into the Missouri-verse

On Percival Everett’s “James.”
Reenactment of a group of settlers on the Ellis Trail, walking through prairie grass beside horse-drawn wagons.

Nicodemus, Kansas: The Last All Black Town in the West

Descendants of the first settlers in Nicodemus are working to preserve and share a story of grit, perseverance, self-governance, and homecomings.
The First Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, 1848.

What American Divorces Tell Us About American Marriages

On the inseparable histories of matrimony and disunion in the United States.
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NIMBYs and YIMBYs Have More in Common Than It Might Seem

NIMBYs were citizen activists who set a model for participatory democracy that YIMBYs should follow.
Newspaper article titled "Black Men Versus the Drug Problem."

Heroin And Chocolate City: Black Community Responses To Drug Addiction In The Nation’s Capital

As early at 1955, government reports indicated that DC’s emerging drug problem represented “a serious and tragic and expensive and ominous” development.

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