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Tidbits- June 19-Readers Comments: Key Characteristics of Fascism; National Guard, Marines, 3000 Seized by ICE Each Day – Nuremberg Laws Went Into Effect in 1935; No Kings Day – This Saturday in More Than 2000 Communities and Cities; Resources; More

Portside
Readers Comments: Juneteenth Freedom Day; No to U.S. War with Iran; Real Democratic Civil War; Future of Left Jewish Identity; Suzanne Crowell - Presente; Hotline When People Have Immigration-Related Court Hearing; Live-stream Socialism Conference

How the First Black Bank Was Looted

Dale Kretz Jacobin
In the early days of the Gilded Age’s rush for profit, freed people’s savings were siphoned off by politically connected financiers. Justene Hill Edwards’s Savings and Trust uncovers how finance cloaked dispossession in the language of uplift.

This Week in People’s History, Jun 11–17, 2025

Portside
Monument to a striking miner who was murdered by company guards A Martyred Miner’s Sacrifice (1925), An Empty Threat (1775), ‘The Part Which Black Folk Played’ (1935), Danger! Curriculum Deviation! (1965), A Very, Very Unpopular Treaty (1960), How to Shrink an Economy (1930)

Will We Have an 1854 Moment?

Van Gosse Portside
The point here is not to replicate a particular historical episode, but rather to suggest the urgency of breaking with conventional thinking about what is permissible. Lethargy and pusillanimity got us into this mess in the first place.

Trump, Historians, and the Lessons of U.S. Tariff History

Elizabeth McKillen Labor and Working-Class History Association
Labor historians should be particularly concerned about Trump’s misuse of tariff history because his tariff policies remain popular with many working-class voters and labor union leaders despite the recent economic meltdown they have caused.

The Anti-Constitutional Attack on Birthright Citizenship

Evan D. Bernick Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project
Looking back at our constitutional history to capture Trump's order’s viciousness. Doing so reveals that the order is not merely unconstitutional, but anti-constitutional.

Heather Cox Richardson on March 15th, the Day Maine Joined the Union

Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American
Maine's petition for statehood was stopped dead by southerners who refused to permit a free state—one that did not permit human enslavement—to enter the Union without a corresponding “slave state” resulting in the infamous "Missouri Compromise."

books

The Missing Persons of Reconstruction

Joshua D. Rothman The New Republic
Enslaved families were regularly separated​. A new history chronicles the tenacious efforts of the emancipated to be reunited​ with their loved ones.
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