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JD Vance, along with characters from the Scorsese movie "Gangs of New York," shown over a background of a map of New York City

JD Vance is Just Another Know Nothing Nativist

MAGA has been a largely white movement of non-urban people who seem to think that people unlike them are scary and that there is only safety in homogeneity.
New York City draft riots.

The 1863 Draft Riots and the Birth of the New York City Police

With low police morale, limited peacekeeping ability and agitated immigrants, the city only needed a match to set it ablaze.
A collage in which a photograph of Blanche Ames Ames is superimposed on a photograph of John F. Kennedy.

How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause

And the grandmother who wouldn’t let him get away with it.
Joshua Houston leads a Juneteenth Parade in Huntsville, Texas, circa 1900.

Juneteenth, Jim Crow

How the fight of one Black Texas family to make freedom real offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to erase history from the classroom.
Scale, with pile of U.S. states weighing down one end, and the U.S. on the other.

How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy

Lawyers tried to use the independent-state-legislature theory to sway the outcomes of the 2000 and 2020 elections. What if it were to become the law of the land?
Drawing of Al Gore at the 2000 Democratic Convention.

Has the United States Ever Been a Democracy?

Jedediah Purdy's new book examines why the U.S. has continuously failed to qualify as a system defined by popular rule.
Painting of the Constitutional Convention in black and white.

Fraudulent Document Cited in Supreme Court Bid to Torch Election Law

Supporters of the “independent state legislature theory” are quoting fake history.
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.
Poster for HBO documentary "Exterminate All the Brutes," featuring a human skull painted to look like a globe.

We Must Burn Them: Against the Origin Story

"History​ is written by the victors, but diligent and continual silencing is required to maintain its claims on the present and future."
A 1939 photo of Sen. Theodore G. Bilbo (D) of Mississippi. (Harris & Ewing Collection/Library of Congress)

The Roots of the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ Believed to Fuel Buffalo Suspect

The white supremacist conspiracy theory that has inspired horrific violence in the past five years dates back to Mississippi Sen. Theodore Bilbo.
After his shooting, a hospitalized Wallace holds up a newspaper touting his victories in the Maryland and Michigan Democratic presidential primaries.

How a Failed Assassination Attempt Pushed George Wallace to Reconsider His Segregationist Views

Fifty years ago, a fame-seeker shot the polarizing politician five times, paralyzing him from the waist down.
Paul Ryan against a background of graph paper and a dotted line.

The Struggle for the Soul of the GOP

Is the Republican Party compatible with democracy?
Hands holding a sign in that reads "DC statehood is racial justice."
partner

Republicans’ Anti-Democratic, Anti-Black Plans for D.C. Are a 19th-Century Throwback

The same ideas that have harmed D.C. for more than a century are again rearing their ugly head.
Ballots in sealed envelopes, in a plastic box with a sticker that reads "Vote NYC."
partner

You Didn’t Always Have to Be a Citizen to Vote in America

The electorate has consistently changed over time as politicians seek to shape it in their favor.
Abandoned school bus with broken windows.

White Flight In Noxubee County: Why School Integration Never Happened

After the U.S Supreme Court forced school integration in early 1970, white families fled to either racist Central Academy or new Mennonite schools.
Black and white photo of Fannie Lou Hamer in her rocking chair.

Why Fannie Lou Hamer’s Definition of "Freedom" Still Matters

The human rights activist and former sharecropper once said that “you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.”
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.
Bell in 1980. He handled civil-rights cases, then came to question their impact.

The Man Behind Critical Race Theory

As an attorney, Derrick Bell worked on many civil-rights cases, but his doubts about their impact launched a groundbreaking school of thought.
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.
Man giving speech to White Citizens' Council
partner

Before the Anti-CRT Activists, There Were White Citizens’ Councils

Banning such teaching isn’t colorblind; it would erase Black people from history and maintain White cultural dominance.
Photo of former African American woman, Bernette Johnson, wearing judicial robes

The Dissenter

The rise of the first Black woman on the Louisiana Supreme Court was characterized by one battle after another with the Deep South’s white power structure.
A shack on Eastland's plantation, as it appeared in the 1964 film

He Risked His Life Filming A Mississippi Senator's Plantation In 1964

Fannie Lou Hamer is among the sharecroppers interviewed in this unauthorized documentary about the plantation of Dixiecrat James Eastland.
A man during the Capitol Siege holding a Confederate flag.

The Case for a Third Reconstruction

The enduring lesson of American history is that the republic is always in danger when white supremacist sedition and violence escape justice.
Wilmington coup marker

We’ve Had a White Supremacist Coup Before. History Buried It.

The 1898 Wilmington insurrection showed “how people could get murdered in the streets and no one held accountable for it.”
President Abraham Lincoln, bareheaded at center, giving the Gettysburg Address, Pennsylvania, 1863

The Party of Lincoln Ignores His Warning Against Mobocracy

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” declared the man who would be America’s sixteenth president.
Person walking with Confederate flag inside of the U.S. Capitol

The Capitol Riot Reveals the Dangers From the Enemy Within

But the belief that America previously had a well-functioning democracy is an illusion.
Man walks through the U.S. Capitol holding a confederate flag on Jan 6, 2021.
partner

1871 Provides A Road Map for Addressing the Pro-Trump Attempted Insurrection

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

The Civil Rights Era was Supposed to Drastically Change America. It Didn’t.

From covid-19 to the 2020 election, the specter of America’s racist history influences many aspects of our lives.
Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams
partner

The Long History of Black Women Organizing in Georgia Might Decide Senate Control

Black women in Georgia have shaped local and state politics for more than a century.
Two kids sitting outside

Georgia On My Mind

The suburbs of Atlanta, where I grew up in an era still scarred by segregation, have transformed in ways that helped deliver Joe Biden the presidency.

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