Justice

How the case of the kidnapped paperboys accelerated the “stranger danger” panic of the 1980s.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.

Elkison v. Deliesseline presented a federal court with the question of whether a state could incarcerate and enslave a free subject of a foreign government.

What the Dred Scott v. Sandford case meant for black citizenship.

Among the nearly half a million atomic bomb victims and survivors were thousands of Japanese American citizens of the United States.

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.

Johanna Fernández's new book on the Young Lords sheds light on the group's fight for clean streets and public health in 1960s New York City.

The late civil-rights leader understood that grassroots organizing was key to delivering political power to Black Americans in the South.

The common denominator? Fear of Black liberation.

Looking back on the George Floyd rebellion.

The massive U.S. apparatus for holding immigrants has a long American tradition.

Anthony Comstock’s crusade against vice constrained the lives of ordinary Americans. His antagonists opened up history for feminists and other activists.

Without New York Times vs. Sullivan, freedom of speech and the press could be drastically truncated.

The relationship between enslaved women and the Revolutionary war.

John Glenn's fan mail shows many girls dreamed of the stars.

The Scottsboro Case quickly became one of the most infamous international spectacles that would eventually define the interwar period.

In 1968, Chicago grabbed the eyes of the world when fifteen thousand Vietnam antiwar protesters vowed to shut down the National Democratic Convention.

In the early twentieth century, teachers were prohibited from keeping their jobs after getting pregnant. Socialist feminists organized to change that.

For centuries, everyone from archaeologists to amateurs pillaged artifacts — and human remains. Now, the FBI is cracking down on those who continue to dig.

A look in on the first evolution trial.

Edward Spicer's writings indicate an awareness of the deeply unjust circumstances that Japanese Americans found themselves in within Japanese internment camps.

How people understood disabilities in the 18th century, in contrast to contemporary interpretation, requires historical nuance.

As wartime labor shortages depleted police forces, and fear of crime grew, chiefs turned to new initiatives to strengthen and professionalize their officers.

Today’s special education system was shaped five decades ago, when parents fought for disabled children’s right to learn.

Of course, Juneteenth should be recognized as a Black holiday belonging to Black people. But this is not a day purely of joyful celebration.

This year’s Juneteenth commemorations must take a deeper look at the history of Black self-liberation to understand what emancipation really means.

The author was monitored for his political activities, but also for being gay. The surveillance took a toll on him.

A new history charts the radical agitation around Black rights and freedom back to the early nineteenth century. 

John Marshall not only owned people; he owned many of them, and aggressively bought them when he could.

Trans Americans have taken to the courts for decades to fight against the notion that they are a threat.