In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, President Trump began routinely describing immigration as an ‘invasion,’ bringing white nationalist conspiracy theory language into mainstream Republican politics. The ‘invasion’ rhetoric is closely linked to the Great Replacement …
During a bipartisan meeting with senators in the Oval Office to discuss immigration, President Trump asked why the United States would want people from ‘shithole countries’ while being briefed on changes to the visa lottery system. Trump questioned why America would want immigrants from …
President Trump traveled to Long Island to deliver a speech linking MS-13 gang violence to immigration policy, using the gang to justify harsh deportation policies. In his 2018 State of the Union, Trump highlighted the murders of teenagers Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, stating ‘Six members of …
Donald Trump formally announced his presidential candidacy with a speech demonizing Mexican immigrants in explicitly racist terms. Trump declared: ‘When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re …
After weeks of Donald Trump loudly questioning President Obama’s citizenship and claiming to have sent private investigators to Hawaii, Obama released his long-form birth certificate to address what he called ‘silliness.’ Trump had appeared on Good Morning America in March 2011 …
California voters approve Proposition 187 by 59% to 41%, a ballot initiative that prohibits undocumented immigrants from accessing public services including non-emergency healthcare and primary and secondary education, while requiring public servants such as medical professionals and teachers to …
Bill Clinton stunned Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition by using a speech to the civil rights organization to attack rapper/activist Sister Souljah, comparing her to white nationalist David Duke. Sister Souljah had been quoted in The Washington Post saying, in the aftermath of the LA riots, …
In the final week of his Senate race against Harvey Gantt—the first African American major party Senate candidate in North Carolina—incumbent Republican Jesse Helms aired the notorious ‘Hands’ or ‘White Hands’ advertisement. The ad depicted white hands crumpling a job …
The Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee, working with Bush campaign consultants, began running the infamous ‘Weekend Passes’ advertisement featuring William Horton, a Black prisoner who committed crimes while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison. …
In a November 1981 anonymous interview with political scientist Alexander Lamis, Republican strategist Lee Atwater provided an extraordinarily candid explanation of how the GOP uses coded racial appeals. Atwater explained: ‘You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” …
Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi—just seven miles from where Ku Klux Klan members had murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964. In his first major speech after the Republican …
During his 1976 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan regularly told the story of a Chicago ‘welfare queen’ to attack social programs using racially coded language. At a campaign speech in Gilford, New Hampshire, Reagan declared: ‘In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. …
Richard Nixon won the presidency with a strategy devised by political consultant Kevin Phillips that explicitly targeted white racial resentment to break up the New Deal coalition. Phillips, who worked on Nixon’s campaign, told journalists during the election that ’the whole secret of …
Governor Ronald Reagan signs the Mulford Act into law, prohibiting the public carrying of loaded firearms in California without a permit. The legislation, crafted by Republican Assemblyman Don Mulford with assistance from the National Rifle Association, specifically targets the Black Panther …
On July 17, 1948, approximately 6,000 Southern Democrats from 13 states converge on Birmingham, Alabama, to form the States’ Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats) after walking out of the Democratic National Convention in protest of the party’s civil rights platform. The convention …
The Congress of Industrial Organizations launches Operation Dixie in spring 1946, the most ambitious post-World War II campaign to unionize industry in the Southern United States, particularly targeting the textile industry across 12 Southern states. A permanent Southern Organizing Committee is …
William J. Simmons, a preacher and promoter of fraternal orders, led a group up Stone Mountain outside Atlanta and burned a large cross, marking the official rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and beginning a new era of organized white supremacist terrorism. Simmons carefully coordinated the KKK revival …
Thirty-one-year-old Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent, was kidnapped from prison in Milledgeville, Georgia, and lynched by an antisemitic mob calling themselves “The Knights of Mary Phagan”—the only Jewish lynching in U.S. history. In spring 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, …
D.W. Griffith’s silent film “The Birth of a Nation” premiered in Los Angeles, becoming the longest and most profitable film produced to that date while securing the future of feature-length films and establishing cinema as a serious artistic medium. With assistance from …