Linda Brown Smith, Ethel Louise Belton Brown, Harry Briggs, Jr., and Spottswood Bolling, Jr. during press conference at Hotel Americana, 1964

Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated

The 1954 Supreme Court decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, declared that “separate but equal” has no place in education.
A detail of an illustration depicting a husband and wife chained together and fighting in a courtroom

The Lost History of No-Fault Divorces

The regulation of divorce has changed a lot in the twentieth century. The National Association of Women Lawyers was instrumental in making that change happen.
Anita Bryant is hit in the face with a pie during a press conference on October 14, 1977

Proposition 6 (The Briggs Initiative): Annotated

Proposition 6, better known as the Briggs Initiative, was the first attempt to restrict the rights of lesbian and gay Americans by popular referendum.
Harvey Milk at Gay Pride, San Jose 1978

Harvey Milk’s Gay Freedom Day Speech: Annotated

Five months before his assassination in 1978, Harvey Milk called on the president of the United States to defend the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.
Garlic Mustard

Plant of the Month: Garlic Mustard

As garlic mustard naturalized in North America, it became a popular plant to forage for impoverished and rural communities.
Facsimile of the original draft of the United States Declaration of Independence with images of the signers around the border.

The Declaration of Independence: Annotated

Related links to free scholarly context on JSTOR for the foundational document in American government.
Cigarmakers, Tampa, Florida, 1909 by Lewis Hine

Are Children “Persons”?

In the mid-nineteenth century, the law was ambiguous.
New York, 1855

How One Household Avoided Emancipation Laws

The Volunbruns enslaved twenty people and moved relentlessly between empires and states as more jurisdictions outlawed slavery.
A protest during the Australian bicentenary

On Black Power in the Pacific

How the meaning of Blackness, and the social construction of race, varies across era and region.
Protest Against Closing of Child Care Center

Is Childcare a Right?

Feminists supported universal childcare as a means of allowing women to advance in the workforce. But did this argument focus mostly on white women?