Person

Jefferson Cowie

Bylines

Defend Liberalism? Let’s Fight for Democracy First

America never really was liberal, and that’s not the right fight anyway. The fight now is for democracy.

by Jefferson Cowie via The New Republic on June 21, 2024
How the Slavery-Like Conditions of Convict Leasing Flourished After the Collapse of Reconstruction

On the terror that filled the void left by the retreat of federal authority in the South.

by Jefferson Cowie via Literary Hub on November 23, 2022
Cowboy Confederates

The ideals of the Confederate South found new force in the bloody plains of the American West.

by Jefferson Cowie via Dissent on November 1, 2020
Is Freedom White?

In our current politics we must be attentive to how talk of American freedom has long been connected to the presumed right of whites to dominate everyone else.

by Jefferson Cowie via Boston Review on September 23, 2020
The Big Picture: The Right Type of Citizenship

Citizens pledge their allegiance to a nation that reciprocates with a pledge of allegiance to them. What does that look like?

by Jefferson Cowie via Public Books on October 31, 2017
How Labor Scholars Missed the Trump Revolt

We thought we knew the white working class. Then 2016 happened.

by Jefferson Cowie via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 1, 2017
When Blue-Collar Pride Became Identity Politics

Remembering how the white working class got left out of the New Left, and why we're all paying for it today.

by Jefferson Cowie, Joan Walsh via Salon on September 6, 2010

Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power

Jefferson Cowie

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Alabama Governor George Wallace standing in front of an American map with the words, "Wallace County," written over it.

The Freedom to Dominate

When viewing federal authority as a bulwark for civil rights against local tyranny, we miss what the U.S. government has done to sustain white freedom.

by Erin Pineda via Dissent on January 1, 2024

Cover of "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance To Federal Power"

The Little Man’s Big Friends

A new book seeks to explain why many Americans, especially but not exclusively in the South, have understood freedom as an entitlement for white people.

by Eric Foner via London Review of Books on May 24, 2023

Governor George Wallace stands defiant at the University of Alabama.

A View of American History That Leads to One Conclusion

For many historians today, the present is forever trapped in the past and defined by the worst of it.

by George Packer via The Atlantic on March 8, 2023

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.

by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on December 8, 2022

A drawing of two people speaking with a third person's head listening between them.

Diverging Majority

Demography has not managed to be destiny in the past half-century—but predictions of a millenarian shift have not lost their appeal.

by Rick Perlstein, Geraldo Cadava via The Baffler on September 3, 2024

Cover of "The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution" by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath.

American Social Democracy and Its Imperial Roots

This post is part of a symposium on “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” a new book by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath.

by Aziz Rana via LPE Project on April 19, 2022

Making Philly a Blue-Collar City

Sports, politics, and civic identity in modern Philadelphia.

by Timothy Lombardo via Sport in American History on September 6, 2018

Labor and the Long Seventies

In the 1970s, women and people of color streamed into unions, strikes swept the nation, and employers launched a fierce counterattack.

by Lane Windham, Chris Brooks via Jacobin on February 25, 2018

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