Why the Tent City for Children Is a Concentration Camp

The Mass Detention of Civilians Without Trial Is a Modern Military Tactic That Targets the Most Vulnerable

What does it mean that the United States of America is taking children from their parents and detaining them in camps?

News of a tent city dedicated to holding children in harsh conditions should evoke alarm, not least because child detention has a long and nasty history. For centuries, children have been used as pawns by governments seeking to control their parents or their leaders. And children have been forcibly relocated in the United States before. Under slavery they were separated from their parents to extort labor and build wealth, while …

By Andrea Pitzer | June 20, 2018

A Hundred Years After Her Lynching, Mary Turner’s Memorial Remains a Battleground

The Ways We Remember, Forget, and Erase the History of This Tragedy Is an Inescapable Part of Its Story

By Julie Buckner Armstrong | May 15, 2018

In Lowndes County, Georgia, by the side of State Road 122, stands a historical marker for “Mary Turner and the Lynching Rampage of 1918.” The metal marker describes in plain …

The Invention and Evolution of the Concentration Camp

From Cuba to South Africa, the Advent of Barbed Wire and Automatic Weapons Allowed the Few to Imprison the Many

By Andrea Pitzer | October 18, 2017

Before the first prisoner entered the Soviet Gulag, before “Arbeit macht frei” appeared on the gates of Auschwitz, before the 20th century had even begun, concentration camps found their first …

What the Gender Reveal Fad Says About Modern Pregnancy

A New Ritual Speaks to Anxieties Surrounding the Medicalization of Childbearing

By Laura Tropp | September 13, 2017

My youngest daughter often asks me to tell her about the day when, pregnant with her, I was riding to work on the subway and wondering whether she would be …

How Hospital Rooms Went from Airy Temples to “Inhuman” Machines

Architecture Used to Pamper Patients. Then Designers Began Prizing Efficiency.

By Jeanne S. Kisacky | June 7, 2017

In the March 1942 issue of the journal Modern Hospital, Charles F. Neergaard, a prominent New York City hospital design consultant, published a layout for a hospital inpatient department that …

Is California Losing Its Ability to Hablar Español?

Our State’s Original Language Is in Decline and It’s Up to California Save It

By Joe Mathews | December 15, 2016

How are Californians going to save Spanish?

Yes, I know that a call to preserve the Spanish language might seem ludicrous in a state whose very name comes from a Spanish …

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