Susan B. Anthony and a Constitutional Challenge
Susan B. Anthony’s most radical move was not that she voted, it was why she believed she had every right to. After she walked into a Rochester polling place in 1872 and cast a ballot, the state treate...
13 Apr 10min
Who Becomes President? Succession, the Vice Presidency, and Executive Power
The most fragile part of the presidency isn’t the election. It’s the moment something goes wrong and the country still needs a commander in chief, a working cabinet, and a government that doesn’t free...
13 Apr 41min
Plessy Vs. Ferguson
We walk through Plessy v. Ferguson and how a planned railcar protest helps the Supreme Court legitimize Jim Crow through the “separate but equal” doctrine. We also dig into Justice John Marshall Harla...
2 Apr 18min
The Lodge Bill of 1890 and the Rise of Jim Crow
The Lodge Bill of 1890 should be as famous as the Compromise of 1877, yet most of us have never heard of it. We sit down with Dr. Sean Beienberg to unpack how a federal election oversight plan, built ...
1 Apr 13min
What the Black Man Wants by Frederick Douglass
Freedom is easy to celebrate in slogans and hard to define when the laws get written. Today we sit with Frederick Douglass at the end of the Civil War as he delivers one of the most direct speeches of...
31 Mar 8min
How The 14th Amendment Applies The Bill Of Rights To States
The Fourteenth Amendment promises a baseline of freedom, but the Supreme Court built that promise through a long series of workarounds. We start with incorporation: how protections in the first eight ...
30 Mar 29min
How Reconstruction Built Birthright Citizenship And Equal Protection
The Fourteenth Amendment is often treated like a simple shortcut for “civil rights,” but its real story is messier, more political, and far more useful for understanding today’s constitutional fights....
27 Mar 17min
How The 13th And 15th Amendments End Slavery And Redefine Voting
The Constitution can promise freedom and still fail to deliver it. We dig into the 13th and 15th Amendments and ask what they were really designed to fix after the Civil War and why their impact has s...
26 Mar 18min
