Illustration of protestors at a Protest March

When Does Political Resistance Work?

The effectiveness of popular movements for social change depends on both underlying political conditions and the strategies adopted by activists.
Woman in Leopard Outfit With Woman in Blue Outfit

Lesbians and the Lavender Scare

Lesbian relationships among government workers were seen as a threat to national security in the 1950s. But what constituted a lesbian relationship was an open question.
Court in session, Freedmen's Bureau offices, Richmond, Virginia, summer 1866

A Short Course in Justice: the Freedmen’s Bureau Courts

Freedmen’s Bureau courts provided a forum for newly emancipated people in the “uncertain legal landscape” of the defeated Confederacy.
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Eulalie Mandeville’s Fortune in Court Records

Court records can function as a kind of archive for those without any other paper trail in history: free people of color and the enslaved.
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The US Army as a Slaveholding Institution

Until the Civil War, US Army officers relied on enslaved servants even while serving in “free states.”
United States flag pointing Washington in cheap plastic globe. Shallow depth of field, focus on flag

What Is Isolationism?

The history and politics of an often-maligned foreign policy concept.
American politician Joseph McCarthy (1908 ? 1957), Republican senator from Wisconsin, testifies against the US Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Washington, DC, June 9, 1954. McCarthy stands before a map which charts Communist activity in the United States.

Joseph McCarthy in Wheeling, West Virginia: Annotated

Senator Joseph McCarthy built his reputation on fear-mongering, smear campaigns, and falsehoods about government employees and their associates.
Precious Newberry, a United States Postal Service mail handler, works to unload her mail truck at the Processing and Distribution Center after collecting mail on the busiest mailing day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service on December 14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.

How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.
12th September 1953: John Kennedy (1917 -1963) and Jacqueline Bouvier (1929 - 1994) pose with their ushers and maids of honor on their wedding day,

The Literal Magic of the Kennedys

Americans have long viewed the Kennedy family as a kind of magical royalty associated with occult notions and conspiracies.
Currency with nature prints of leaves from 1775 and 1778

The First Green Money: Nature-Printed Currency

Benjamin Franklin used naturalist Joseph Breintnall’s botanic prints of leaves on his paper currency to foil counterfeiters.