People have a right to walk around their neighborhood park without being terrorized by iconography devoted to people who denied their ancestors human rights.
Do recent protests against the symbols of racism--monuments and statues--reflect a political movement that can easily be absorbed by today's multicultural corporations, or will that energy sustain a push to fundamentally reform American capitalism too?
On the 4th of July of 1870, a 1,200 mile race between two steamboats on the Mississippi River was decided. The race attracted global interest. Reporters wrote about it. Gamblers wagered on it. People gathered and cheered for it.
The anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which finally eliminated slavery in the entire United States, should be made a national holiday.
The repression of political dissent in Czarist Russia led many future revolutionaries to literature as a gateway to political thought; their poetic idealism may have made them both effective and dangerous.
McCarthy rode a wave of bullying and bluster until it broke back on him. Trump has advantages as president that McCarthy didn't, but faces the same problem: his tactics will work until they don't.
It took deep reforms and patience to build trust in policing across the sectarian divide of Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Accords. Does that process have lessons for the United States?
The history of liberal law-and-order reveals that procedural reforms implemented on top of a structure of policing that has been empowered to protect property and control “disorder” are not only doomed to fail but will produce the conditions for more protest and resistance.
Until white Americans reckon with the significance of white supremacy in America, they will deflect a sense of responsibility by laying blame for black suffering on black Americans themselves.
The viral video of the confrontation between birder Christian Cooper and dog walker Amy Cooper in Central park illuminates how nature and race have been constructed in America, giving privileged access to some while turning others into eternal trespassers.
Marian Sims's 1942 historical novel Beyond Surrender was not nearly as popular as Gone with the Wind. But it reminds us today of a history that might have been--both during Reconstruction and in the popular portrayal of the period.
Vannevar Bush's efforts to bring the expertise of scientists to bear on public policy decisions led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation under Harry Truman's presidency.
In an environment of intense mutual suspicion—soldiers accused civilians of stingy ingratitude while civilians saw the army as a threat to their liberty—Washington’s trustworthiness bound the two sides together.
Joseph Biden is urged to remember John F. Kennedy's admiration and celebration of achievement and Franklin Roosevelt's spirit of pragmatic experimentation in his campaign. Should he be elected, he'll need inspiration to lead the nation out of dire circumstances.
Nat Turner followed his evangelical faith to challenge a profane and degenerate slaveholding regime. Today's white evangelical Christians must decide whether to support the successor of that regime.
Walter Mondale's choice of Representative Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984 opened the major parties' general election tickets to women for the first time. Will Joe Biden's campaign fulfill that promise this year?
The use of federal troops to enforce domestic law and order has usually served the interests of big business and white supremacy; recent calls to send in the troops are not concerned with protecting freedom.
