Anti-Catholicism and the Fight Over American Identity
How anti-Catholic fear shaped immigration, public schools, the Know-Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan, and the meaning of American belonging.
Read the storyExplore the lives and movements of LGBTQIA+ people through laws, work, identity, community, and struggles for recognition.
Editorial illustration · not archival photography
How Cold War security fears turned anti-gay prejudice into federal investigations, firings, personnel policy, and decades of workplace exclusion.
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How anti-Catholic fear shaped immigration, public schools, the Know-Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan, and the meaning of American belonging.
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A historical examination of how fear has been mobilized in U.S. politics to justify policy, expand authority, and shape public behavior across generations.
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Explore how convict leasing emerged after slavery, how it blended punishment and profit, and how it shaped modern labor and incarceration through race, class, a
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Learn how U.S. naturalization law tied citizenship to whiteness, how courts defined racial eligibility, and why citizenship became a boundary of belonging.
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Learn how fear of rebellion, labor independence, and social change shaped American policing policy and enforcement over centuries.
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