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Jason Aldean Can’t Rewrite the History His Song Depends On

That history has nothing to do with culture wars, and everything to do with what real justice looks like in the United States, and who has access to it.
by Nicole Hemmer via CNN on July 20, 2023

Long Before Daniel Penny Killed Jordan Neely, There Was 'Death Wish'

Defenses of the recent killing of Jordan Neely suggest that the film’s reactionary, Wild West–style vigilante violence still holds the imagination of many.
by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on May 27, 2023
An 1886 illustration of a cowboy and cow camp.

When Texas Cowboys Fought Private Property

When cattle barons carved up Texas with barbed wire in the late 19th century, cowboys formed fence-cutting gangs to preserve the open range.
by David Griscom via Jacobin on October 4, 2022
Abolitionist broadside from 1854 calling out the fugitive slave bill commissioner

An Angry Mob Broke Into A Jail Looking For A Black Man—Then Freed Him

How Oct. 1 came to be celebrated as “Jerry Rescue Day” in abolitionist Syracuse.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on October 1, 2022
Kyle Rittenhouse waves to cheering fans as he appears at a panel discussion at a Turning Point USA America Fest event on Dec. 20, 2021.
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Bernhard Goetz and the Roots of Kyle Rittenhouse’s Celebrity on the Right

Why vigilante violence appeals politically.
by Pia Beumer via Made By History on June 15, 2022
Striking miners in Buchtel, Ohio receiving "Blackleg" workmen when returning from their work escorted by a detachment of Pinkerton's detectives

American Vigilantism

In the early 20th century, labor unrest and strike breaking were done not by the government, but by private agencies and self-appointed vigilantes.
by Michael Mark Cohen, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on December 26, 2021
A picture of armed militias

What the Term “Gun Culture” Misses About White Supremacy

The rise of tactical gun culture among civilians reveals a new front in the U.S. battle against nativist authoritarianism.
by Chad Kautzer via Boston Review on December 17, 2021
Document from the first session of Congress

California’s Vigilante Tradition

The far-right protestors in Huntington Beach aren’t as novel as they seem.
by Kevin Waite via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 23, 2021

The Bloody History of Border Militias Runs Deep — and Law Enforcement Is Part of It

The West's history is full of stories of white Americans taking the law into their own hands to beat back nonwhite populations.
by Ryan Deveraux via The Intercept on May 23, 2019

The Civilian Solution to Bank Robberies

The surprising story of the vigilantes who took it upon themselves to catch bank robbers in the 1920s and 30s.
by Erin Blakemore, Paul Musgrave via JSTOR Daily on May 17, 2019

How Violent American Vigilantes at the Border Led to Trump’s Wall

From the 80s onwards, the borderlands were rife with paramilitary cruelty and racism. But the president’s rhetoric has thrown fuel on the fire.
by Greg Grandin via The Guardian on February 28, 2019
Screen shot from Red Dead Redemption 2, of a man in western clothing smoking a cigarette.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Confronts the Racist Past and Lets You Do Something About It

Poke around the game’s fictional South and you’ll find cross-burning Klansmen, whom you are free to kill.
by Jonathan S. Jones via Slate on February 4, 2019

Monroe Work Today

On these pages you will meet Monroe Nathan Work, who lived from 1866- 1945. This website is a rebirth of one piece of his work.
via Monroe Work Today on March 26, 2017

Self-Righteous Devils: What Ozark Vigilantes of the 1880s Reveal About Modern America

The story of the Bald Knobbers is a terrifying parable about what happens when government fails and violence reigns.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on February 24, 2017
NAACP Legal Defense Fund button against lynching.

“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.
by Ida B. Wells, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on February 21, 2025
Ku Kluz Klan imperial wizard Hiram Wesley Evans.

Making Sense of the Second Ku Klux Klan

Understanding the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century gives insight into the roots of today’s reactionary activists and policymakers.
by Chad Pearson via Jacobin on December 22, 2024
Black Legion members in wearing capes and hoods.

You Know About the KKK, but What About the Black Legion?

The Black Legion was a white supremacist fascist group headquartered in Lima, Ohio. Its worst deeds are lost to memory, but they shouldn’t be.
by Dana Frank via Jacobin on October 18, 2024
Ida B. Wells
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Ida B. Wells and the Long Crusade to Outlaw Lynching

Journalist, civil rights activist and suffragist, she dedicated her life to documenting injustices against Black Americans and calling for change.
via Retro Report on February 15, 2024
Maury County Courthouse

The Story of the Lynching Site where Jason Aldean Filmed a Music Video

Henry Choate, 18, was killed, dragged from the back of a car through Columbia, Tenn., and his body was hanged at the Maury County Courthouse.
by Timothy Bella via Retropolis on July 19, 2023
Historic marker for the 1892 lynching of Robert Lewis at Port Jervis.

Death by Northern White Hands

On Philip Dray’s “A Lynching at Port Jervis.”
by Adolf Alzuphar via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 26, 2023
The cover of The Black Mask magazine, June 1, 1923, featuring a hooded Klan member.

The Gumshoes Who Took On the Klan

In the pages of "Black Mask" magazine, the Continental Op and Race Williams fought the KKK even as they shared its love of vigilante justice.
by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on May 24, 2023
Painting called "Hudibras’ Discomfiture at the Hands of the Skimmington," by Francis Le Piper, seventeenth century.

American Charivari

The history and context of the made-up aesthetics of the early Ku Klux Klan.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 24, 2023
Four white men kidnapping Black man

Kidnappers of Color Versus the Cause of Antislavery

Thousands of free-born Black people in the North were kidnapped into slavery through networks that operated as a form of “Reverse Underground Railroad.”
by Richard Bell, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on December 8, 2022
Building of the old Pendleton Farmers' Society.

Ablaze: The 1849 White Supremacist Attack on a South Carolina Post Office

The bonfire was a public spectacle for Black people, as well as any white dissenters. It was a calculated warning.
by Susanna Ashton via Southern Spaces on December 2, 2022
Corner store in Detroit.

Murder At the Corner Store: Immigrant Merchants and Law and Order Politics in Postwar Detroit

With seventeen holdups in the past few months, something had to be done. “We will talk to the mayor and the police commissioner. We need more protection".
by Kenneth Alyass via The Metropole on November 17, 2022
Print shows Rebel troops killing the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, and setting fire to the buildings.

Where Will This Political Violence Lead? Look to the 1850s.

In the mid-19th century, a pro-slavery minority used violence to stifle a growing anti-slavery majority, spurring their opposition to respond in kind.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on October 29, 2022
The Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs addressing a crowd, circa 1910.

How World War I Crushed the American Left

A new book documents a period of thriving radical groups and their devastating suppression.
by Joanna Scutts via The New Republic on October 18, 2022
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington on June 25, 2017.
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Far-Right Views in Law Enforcement are Not New

65 years ago this week, Edwin Walker helped enforce Little Rock integration. Then he devoted himself to segregation.
by Anna Duensing via Made By History on September 28, 2022
“Raise Up,” a statue by artist Hank Willis Thomas of African Americans with their hands raised above their heads, is featured in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History

A researcher delves into the past to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era South Carolina.
by Deidre H. Crumbley via Sapiens on August 10, 2022
Black and white image of people observing photographs hanging on the wall at an exhibition in Oaxaca in 1999 about magonismo.

The Mexican Revolution as U.S. History

Making the case for why U.S. history only makes sense when told as a binational story.
by Jonna Perrillo via Boston Review on August 4, 2022
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