Did Ketanji Brown Jackson Rule Against Black Workers? It’s Not So Simple. Washington Post. February 21, 2022.
What Fannie Lou Hamer Can Teach Today’s Activists. (reviewing Keisha N. Blain, Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America). Washington Post. November 19, 2021.
How a Decades-long Conversation Shaped the Young United States. (reviewing Akhil Reed Amar, The Words that Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840). Washington Post. May 14, 2021.
Corporations that Back Voting Rights Will Find it’s Good for Business, Too. Washington Post. April 20, 2021. (with Norman Eisen).
Some Free-speech Norms are in Danger: Maybe that’s a Good Thing. (reviewing Ellis Cose, The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America). Washington Post. November 6, 2020).
Running Deeper than Race: America’s Caste System. (reviewing Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents). Washington Post. July 31, 2020.
James Baldwin Spoke Eloquently to His Era: Does He Speak to Ours? (reviewing Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own). Washington Post. July 17, 2020.
A Black Writer on Individualism, Identity and Indifference in Trump’s America. (reviewing Clifford Thompson, What is Is: Race, Family and One Thinking Man’s Blues). Washington Post. December 19, 2019.
The Contradictory Conservatism of Clarence Thomas. (reviewing Corey Robin, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas). Washington Post. September, 26, 2019.
The Lasting Legacy of a Brutal Racial Beating in 1946 South Carolina (reviewing Richard Gergel, Unexampled Courage), Washington Post, January 31, 2019.
A Defense of Black Lives Matter from the Activist in the Blue Vest (reviewing DeRay Mckesson, On the Other Side of Freedom), Washington Post, November 2, 2018.
Can History Prepare Us for the Trump Presidency?, (essays by twenty-one historians), Politico, January 22, 2017.
It’s Not Obama, It’s Just the Sixth Year, TIME, November 7, 2014.
Remembering Civil Rights in 1963, 50 Years On. Huffington Post. January 27, 2013.
Five Myths about Two-term Presidents. Washington Post. November 9, 2012.
Health Care Ruling: Not a Liberal Victory. The Root. July 7, 2012.
The Roots of Clarence Thomas’ Black Burden. The Root. April 6, 2012.
Progressives are Disenchanted with Obama — Abolitionists were Disenchanted with Lincoln. History News Network. July 10, 2011.
The Supreme Court as a Racially Representative Institution, SCOTUS Blog, February 4, 2010.
Rethinking the Rand Paul Controversy. History News Network. May 30, 2010.
A Measure of History (on the Passage of the Affordable Care Act) Boston Globe. March 25, 2010.
Even at Harvard, Obama Had a Knack for Bonding with Diverse People. Harrisburg Patriot News. February 17, 2008.
Which side is Brown vs. Board on?: Its Legal History Can’t Provide Absolutes in the Search for Racial Justice. Los Angeles Times. July 4, 2007. (reprinted as “The Court, Race and Brown: Precedents to Suit Each Side: Famous Figures in Civil Rights History Speak in Two Voices,” Baltimore Sun, July 8, 2007.)